Bone Rattle

Book 3: Arliss Cutter Novel

by Marc Cameron

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

In the icy heart of Alaska, a series of gruesome murders leads Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter into a firestorm of searing corruption, clashing cultures, and bone-chilling fear. . . .

In Juneau, a young Native archeologist is sent to protect the ancient burial sites uncovered by an Alaskan gold mining company. He never returns.
In Anchorage, a female torso—minus head, hands, and feet—is washed ashore near a jogging trail by the airport. It is not the first.
At Alaska’s Fugitive Task Force, Arliss Cutter and deputy Lola Teariki are pulled from their duties and sent to a federal court in Juneau. Instead of tracking dangerous fugitives, Cutter and Lola will be keeping track of sequestered jurors in a high-profile trial. The case involves a massive drug conspiracy with ties to a mining company, a lobbyist, and two state senators. When a prosecuting attorney is murdered—and a reporter viciously attacked—Cutter realizes they’re dealing with something much bigger, and darker, than a simple drug trial. The truth lies deep within the ancient sites and precious mines of this isolated land—and inside the cold hearts of those would kill to hide its secrets. . . .
What’s buried in Alaska stays in Alaska.

Release date: April 27, 2021

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 456

Sample

Anchorage

Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Arliss Cutter’s grandfather had warned him early on: If they’re cornered, just about anybody on earth would jam a pencil into your eye.

That was Cutter’s job—cornering people.

On paper, Jarome Pringle was just number 3 on a list of wanted criminals the Alaska Fugitive Task Force had focused on for the week—nothing special. Not dangerous. But then, Jarome Pringle had never been cornered.

Cutter took his grandfather’s teachings to heart—and passed them on to the deputies he trained, the deputies he kicked doors with.

Like today.

Whenever possible, Cutter liked to hunt his fugitives in the tiny sliver of time when dogs and dopers overlapped their sleeps. It was the safest, if not the most convenient time to hit a house for a fugitive.

It lowered the odds that anyone on his team would get a pencil in the eye.

It was still dark, but that rarely helped you tell time in Alaska. In this case, it was early, a little after five a.m. It was still cold enough for a coat, but getting warmer every day, warm enough that the gray mountains of snow—fifteen, twenty feet high—that had been piled up in virtually every Anchorage parking lot and neighborhood cul-de-sac would weep rivulets of dirty water into the streets as soon as the sun came up in a couple of hours.

With any luck, the task force would be done by then, and making ops plans for the next fugitive.

Fugitive work—often simply called “enforcement”—was the sexy side of the Marshals Service. Everybody had to hook and haul prisoners at some point in his or her career. Deputy US marshals—DUSMs—sat in court and listened to attorneys drone on for so long they probably could pass the bar. They took mug shots, rolled fingerprints, conducted strip searches (lift and turn please), met the airlift with van loads of bad guys—but nobody came aboard for all that. You got a job with the Marshals Service because you wanted to work enforcement.

You wanted to hunt.

A good chief deputy spread the wealth. Jill Phillips was one of the best. She made sure every POD—plain old deputy—in the District of Alaska, even the ones who’d just graduated from Marshals Basic at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, had a warrant or two of their own to work.

PODs divided their time between court, judicial protection, asset forfeiture, hurricane aftermath, guarding dignitaries with State at the United Nations General Assembly—pretty much anything the Attorney General decided he or she wanted the Marshals Service to do. Deputies assigned to the Alaska Fugitive Task Force rarely had to dilute their schedule with collateral duties. They hunted. Every day—and many nights. They cornered the name on the paper, took him or her to jail, and then moved on to the next warrant in the stack, all the while trying not to get shot or stabbed by some bad guy’s baby mama.

Cutter mulled over his grandfather’s wisdom as he drove through the backstreets of midtown Anchorage in the gunmetal chill of the predawn darkness. Gravel popped under the tires of his government-issue SUV. It was a Ford Escape—surely a joke from USMS fleet management in DC.

His partner, Deputy Lola Teariki, a Polynesian of Cook Island Maori descent, sat in the passenger seat. She was not a particularly large woman—but her personality sprawled across the inside of the vehicle and took up a lot of space. Still a ways from thirty, she had four years on with the Service. Thick ebony hair piled high on her head in a tight bun, still glistening from the shower after her zero-dark-thirty workout. She and Cutter were dressed alike—navy blue long-sleeve shirts, khaki Vertx pants, and olive drab load-bearing ballistic vests with a five-pointed circle-star badge and POLICE: US MARSHAL embroidered in white across the back.

Gazing out the passenger window, she brooded over something. She’d speak up soon. She always did. Even half-formed ideas seemed too much of a burden for Lola to carry around. She had to get them off her chest. That usually meant telling it all to Cutter, letting him in on what she’d figured out with the certitude that came from her two-point-something decades on the planet.... He didn’t mind. She was a good kid. A little blabby, but her heart was in the right place—and she’d sure proved herself. Fit, smart, and hit on by pretty much every male officer or agent who met her, she was tough as an old boot, ready to jump in and go to town when more fragile souls might shy away. She could bat her lashes innocently one minute, then intimidate the hell out of some bad guy when she rolled her eyes and scrunched her nose the next. She called it “going Polynesian-princess to Maori-warrior face.”

For now, whatever notion that was taking shape inside her head was still in its early stages, so she was quiet, allowing Cutter to ponder on his grandfather while he drove the last two blocks to the meeting.

For as long as Arliss had known him, the old man, called Grumpy by most, lived by a certain creed. He called these doctrines his Grumpy Man-Rules, and passed them on to the grandsons he’d raised. Arliss’s brother, Ethan, had gone on to become an engineer. A noble profession to be sure, but a mystery to Grumpy. The old man had been an officer with Florida Marine Patrol. He chased poachers, rescued idiots, patrolled in his airboat to enforce the law on the water—and there was a lot of water in Florida. Arliss had followed, but on the federal side of the business, which riled the old man at first. Still, Grumpy saved back a few of his axioms that had special meaning to someone who carried a badge, even if it was for the feds, who he generally felt were as useless as tits on a boar hog.

Well over a decade in the US Marshals—not to mention Cutter’s time with the 75th Rangers—had borne out the old man’s wisdom in spades.

Cutter made a left.

Lola kept quiet, still forming her notion.

Jarome Pringle’s warrant file said he was harmless, but Cutter knew better. There was no such thing as harmless, not in this line of work.

Cutter mulled over the possible outcomes, letting the chilly wind through his open window hit him in the face, bracing him awake.

Spring in Alaska wasn’t all kite flying and daffodils. Breakup, they called it. As in the ice on the rivers was breaking up. Breakup in the city meant mud and dust and more mud. He found himself glad that temps had dropped into the high twenties overnight, frosting the grass and freezing the mud while they worked this warrant.

Some sourdoughs joked that there were only two seasons—winter and July. A native of Florida and lover of all things to do with the sea and beach, Cutter found the Great Land pleasant—mostly. He loved the fall, enjoyed the summers, found new things to learn in the austerity and bitter winters of the Interior. But breakup . . . there wasn’t much to like about slop and slush and windshields that you could never get clean.

The light was good, though. By mid-May the sun would rise in Utqiagvik—or Barrow—and wouldn’t dip below the horizon again for eighty-four days. Anchorage wasn’t as drastic. Here, they gained something like five minutes a day until they had about twenty hours of light.

Cutter was the supervisory deputy over enforcement in Alaska, which meant he ran the task force. He chose which paper the teams worked, approved the operational plans, and kicked the biggest ones up to the chief for her check before anyone kicked a door. Safety for all members of the task force fell to him. It didn’t matter if they were deputies like Lola Teariki, officers detailed from Anchorage Police Department, Alaska State Troopers, or other feds from DHS or ATF. Cutter led from the front—which often meant getting out of the way and letting his guys do their job—another thing Grumpy had taught him.

A thick head of perpetually mussed blond hair put Cutter at little over six-three. He steered clear of weights for the most part, staying in shape with running, push-ups, pull-ups, and swimming—plus a little work on the heavy bag every couple of days. With a fighting weight of two and a quarter, he was only just able to wedge himself behind the wheel of the midsize Ford SUV when he wore all his tactical gear. In his early forties, Cutter had yet to hit the metabolic wall that caused so many of his peers to turn into Deputy Donuts instead of the lean machines they’d been out of Marshals Service Basic.

He was lucky in that regard. The rest of his life—

“We need a new name, Cutter,” Lola said, shattering the silence. The weight of her idea had grown too heavy for her to bear alone. Her father’s Kiwi accent sharpened Teariki’s vowels and chased away her Rs when she was tired, turning “Cutter” into Cuttah.

They were too close to the meeting point to get into a long conversation, which is why he humored her. “A new name for what?”

Lola yawned, big, like a lioness. “For the Alaska Fugitive Task Force. AFTF is stuffed as far as acronyms go. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It’s too early for this, Lola,” Cutter said, driving over a bump of old snow as he took a corner.

“Hear me out, boss.” Teariki patted the console between them. “A good acronym says something about what it stands for—like the FIST operations the Marshals Service used to do back in the day. Fugitive Investigative Strike Team. Now that’s got verve.”

Cutter shrugged. “How about the FALCON roundups.”

Lola scoffed, making a buzzer sound. “Lame! Federal and Local Cops . . . I don’t even remember. On Nightshift . . . ? No, also stuffed. The acronym should at least make sense.” She folded her arms over the front of her ballistic vest and stared out the windshield at the darkness. “I’ll keep thinking on it.”

“You do that,” Cutter said, making another turn down a dark street toward the rally point, where his team would link up with two uniformed Anchorage police officers.

The smell of new birch and cottonwood buds on the cold air pinched his nose as he drove. There were other odors too, coming through the open window, less pleasant. Anchorage was a city of over 60,000 dogs. Which was all well and good. Cutter liked dogs. But not every owner was responsible, and that many pups left behind a lot of little melting land mines as the snows receded.

Another reason not to like breakup.

One of those sixty thousand dogs woofed somewhere down the block, grumbling at the chill.

Another SUV was already parked along the road ahead, along with two marked APD cruisers.

Cutter pulled in behind the SUV, two blocks east of Jarome Pringle’s residence.

It was time to not get stabbed in the eye.

A part from being a tall, fat white guy who spoke with a distinctive Jamaican patois, Jarome Pringle seemed an unremarkable fugitive. The task force had dealt with him before. He’d been no problem—but in that instance, they’d snatched him out of a vehicle on a traffic stop. This time, they were going into his house, or more accurately, his new girlfriend’s house.

Cutter had chosen the edge of this vacant lot for a quick briefing. It was near an Anchorage green belt of birch and spruce trees that ran along Chester Creek, but far enough away that no one at Pringle’s could hear vehicle doors shutting in the predawn darkness. Cutter killed the headlights and reached between the center console and his seat for his Battle Board.

The dome light remained off when he opened the door—anything else was a recipe for getting shot.

Lola arched her back, stretching, hands pressed flat on the Ford’s headliner in another long, feline yawn.

“You got the warrant file?”

“Got it,” Cutter said.

He held up the multi-cam Battle Board—essentially a ballistic nylon folder with a clear Plexiglas face, under which he’d slipped a map of the neighborhood and a hand-sketched floorplan of the house.

He’d marked up the map and floorplan with a grease pencil to aid in the briefing he was about to give the two Anchorage police officers who were there to help with the early-morning arrest. He’d gone over everything with Lola and the other two participating members of the task force the evening before.

The DEA had arrested Pringle for possession of heroin the month before. They had some intel that he was trying to establish a foothold for a Jamaican posse in Anchorage, but he’d been holding only a couple of grams at the time—not enough to prove intent to sell. His defense attorney had convinced the judge that he was only holding the drugs for his troubled girlfriend—merely a good man, doing the right thing to help curb the terrible opiate epidemic. The magistrate hadn’t exactly believed that theory, but was troubled by the small amount of heroin if Pringle was supposed to be such a player, and allowed him out on bond. He’d promptly gotten arrested again for the DUI. The state judge allowed him out on his own recognizance as soon as he was sober enough to stagger, but the incident had triggered a federal supervised release violation.

Pringle was no rocket scientist, but he was probably bright enough to realize an arrest warrant was trickling down to some guys somewhere with guns and badges. Cutter wanted at least a couple of those badges and guns to be APD. The uniforms gave clarity in these hazy morning hours.

Sean Blodgett, a stocky stub of a deputy with a map of scars visible through his buzz cut, sauntered up beside Cutter. He took another quick look at the Battle Board on the hood of the SUV and gave a knowing nod. A bit of a shit magnet, Blodgett couldn’t seem to get out of his own way. He ended up with some sort of sprain, scrape, or contusion at least once a month. Still, he was tough as a bull, spending nearly as much time in the gym as Lola. Other deputies in the office had taken to calling him BAF—for Big-Armed Fed—but Cutter had always thought he looked a little like a T. rex with his arms sticking out of the oversize ballistic vest.

Nancy Alvarez, Blodgett’s partner on the task force, wore the same vest, but she wore it better, more naturally. A hell of a man hunter, she was on loan from Anchorage PD—and often acted as liaison, smoothing the way for Cutter when they needed to steal a couple of uniforms to hit a house but didn’t want to call in SWAT.

The responding officers—a black female named Brooks and a tall kid named Slavich, who looked like he should have been playing for the NBA, gravitated toward Alvarez. She carried special deputy US marshal credentials, but at heart, she was one of them.

Cutter opened the Battle Board and took out four copies of Pringle’s last booking photo. A cold wind rattled out of the birch forest to the northwest, making him thankful for the vest and long-sleeve shirt. He’d have been scuba diving this time of year if he were back in Florida.

Cutter went over the layout of the house and the suspected occupants. “Should be just him and his girlfriend. No kids that we’re aware of.”

“This Pringle guy a fighter?” Officer Brooks asked. She studied the booking photo under the glare of the streetlight, making a couple of notes in a little pad.

“Not exactly,” Cutter said, forcing a half smile for the sake of the two officers. He’d inherited his grandfather’s tendency toward a mean mug, but he didn’t want all the young troops on patrol thinking the boss of the fugitive task force walked around looking pissed off at the world. He tapped his copy of the photo with his index finger. Pringle was a heavy man, well over three hundred pounds, with a fountain of dreadlocks sprouting off a head that looked the size of a basketball. “He’s what my granddad would have called a butterbean—like a regular bean, only bigger. He’s got more mass than meanness, but that much mass can hurt you, even if he’s just trying to get away.”

“We popped him last year at his baby mama’s house,” Lola said. “He tried to hide his fat ass under a pile of dirty clothes. He had a pet tarantula, though . . . or at least he did . . . kind of freaked me out, to be honest.”

“Kill it with fire,” Blodgett observed, sounding and looking dead serious.

Cutter put a hand flat on the hood of his SUV, the movement pulling everyone’s attention toward him in the scant light. “It goes without saying, but spiders do not constitute a deadly force scenario. Not even big, hairy ones.”

“Still,” Alvarez said. “Don’t hesitate to Tase the SOB if he doesn’t comply with your orders. And, for Pete’s sake, don’t stop in front of him once he starts moving.”

“Copy,” both officers said at once.

“Small favor,” Cutter said, addressing the two uniforms. “Deputy Blodgett is covering the rear of the residence. Would one of you mind helping him out?”

Slavich scratched the top of his head and yawned. It was nearing the end of his ten-hour shift. “I’ll go.”

“Outstanding.” Cutter nodded at Alvarez, who was to explain the tactics. “Nancy.”

“We’ll try not to kick the door,” she said. “Pringle’s girlfriend is good for dozens of vehicle burglaries, and thieves are paranoid as hell about anybody stealing the stuff that they stole from someone else. The Silverado parked out front looks to have a working alarm. I’ll try to get in it, set it off. She’ll come to the door to see who’s trying to take her shit. . . .”

She outlined the rest of her plan, rocking back and forth to keep her feet warm.

“Okay,” Cutter said, knowing how quickly briefings could devolve. “Last condo on the end of four. Dirty white siding with black trim.” He jabbed at the map again to get it set in everyone’s mind. “Wooden planter on the right side of the porch.”

Much like the “time out” that surgeons did before an operation to make sure they were cutting the right bits off the right patient, Cutter liked to remind everyone of the physical location of their target one last time before they moved. Booting the wrong door could prove every bit as dire as taking the wrong kidney.

“Weapons?” Officer Brooks asked. She was bright-eyed, fit, smaller than Lola, with hardly enough room on her waist for her Glock, extra magazines, Taser, pepper spray, radio, and handcuffs.

“There was a handgun in the drawer during the last arrest,” Lola said. “It was stolen, so we took that one, but I’d assume he’s replaced it—if only to keep from getting robbed by other heroin dealers.”

Brooks nodded slowly, as if she expected as much.

Sean Blodgett’s face screwed into an angry grimace. “And maybe a spider,” he said.

Cutter tapped the Colt Python revolver at his side—his grandfather’s service weapon. The USMS regulation Glock rested over his right kidney. He moved quickly down the street with Lola and Officer Brooks on his heels. They stopped in a line at the edge of the driveway, fifteen feet from the front door, using the shadows of a fat blue spruce for concealment. Cutter took a deep breath of the chilly air, centering his thoughts. There was a certain smell to working a warrant. Brighter, more alive. Grumpy always said if you didn’t smell it, you were in the wrong business. Cutter had been creeping up on bad guys for nearly twenty years if he counted his military time. Mud hut, remote cabin, or residential neighborhood—it never got old.

Pistols out and stacked single file, they were close enough to hear one another breathing. Officer Brooks, who brought up the rear, gave Lola a firm tap on the side of the thigh with her nondominant hand. She was good to go. Lola repeated the gesture to Cutter, who did the same to Alvarez, who trotted off without another word.

From this point on, things would unfold at lightning speed.

Officer Brooks and Lola peeled off the line as soon as Alvarez reached the car, padding softly up the concrete steps to take up positions on the porch on either side of the doorjamb—out of the fatal funnel.

Cutter covered Nancy, watching the windows above while she approached the truck.

Another dog barked. This one closer. Each tiny noise sounded exponentially louder than it really was. The zip of spruce boughs against a ballistic nylon vest surely woke everyone in the neighborhood. Lola’s stifled cough echoed all the way down the street.

It was getting light enough to see Alvarez clearly as she lifted the door handle on Pringle’s blue Silverado, using the body of the vehicle for cover. She put her hip into the truck, rocking it. Headlights flashed and the horn blared. That part of her mission complete, Alvarez trotted up the steps and parked herself behind Lola.

Now Cutter could move. He reached the porch in four quick strides, skipping all but one step to fall in behind the others at the same moment the door yawned open.

Pringle’s girlfriend stepped out wearing nothing but a terrycloth robe and a very large pair of panties. She was a corpulent woman, and the robe, meant for someone much smaller, did little to hide everything that wasn’t covered by the undies. One hand shielding her eyes from the flashing headlights, the other held a cell phone. As Alvarez had pointed out, it was astounding how quickly felons called in help when someone tried to steal what they’d stolen from someone else.

Officer Brooks identified herself and motioned the woman the rest of the way out with a flick of her hand. Lola and Alvarez covered the open door with their handguns.

Cutter bumped Lola so she could take a step inside and cover the entry. The stairway to the second floor was eight feet across the small foyer. Back to the door, Cutter took note of the coat closet to his right—there was always a closet—and the open hall leading to the rear of the house. He covered the landing above with his Colt, while Alvarez covered the interior hall. The heat inside the house was turned up full blast, and the moldering odor of dirty socks and sour dishes hit them full in the face.

It smelled like a felony warrant.

Officer Brooks turned the heavy woman so she could cuff her before the shock of seeing cops at the door wore off.

The ratchet sound of the handcuffs brought the woman out of her stupor. “Why you doin’ this? Am I under arrest?”

“Depends,” Alvarez said, her voice calm but firm.

“You gonna let me tie my robe?”

“Just face the wall and you’ll be fine,” Alvarez said over her shoulder, standing just inside the door. “Which room is Jarome in?”

“He’s not here,” the girlfriend said.

“That’s a good way to be under arrest,” Alvarez said. “We know he’s here. If you hide him, you go to jail for hindering.”

“Why you ask me that shit if you already know?”

“I asked what room he’s in,” Alvarez reminded her.

The woman gave an insolent shrug. “I’m freezing my ass off out here on the porch. How am I supposed to know where he is?”

“Got a long gun leaning against the wall at the top of the steps,” Lola piped.

“Who else is here?” Brooks asked.

“Just us,” the woman said.

Alvarez shook her head. “Us?”

“Me and Jarome.”

Cutter pointed to the left, motioning for Lola to come with him and clear the bottom floor while Nancy Alvarez watched the stairway. He didn’t like huddling at the door for too long.

At that moment, Jarome Pringle stumbled around the corner from the direction of the kitchen. Dreadlocks stuck skyward from a hard night’s sleep. Belly rolls all but obscured his leopard-print Speedo. He didn’t appear to see Cutter until he made it well into the foyer. He tried to spin and run up the stairs but didn’t have the dexterity or speed.

“Jarome!” Cutter barked. “Stop! US Marshals!” Unwilling to let him get to the gun, Cutter sprang forward, catching Pringle by the hairy shoulder before he made the second step. The big man roared, furious at having his castle invaded so early in the morning.

Cutter was not a small man, but Pringle had him by at least a hundred pounds and, teetering on the stairs above him, nearly a foot of height. Prudently, Cutter took a step back, knowing from experience what Lola was about to do. The vast majority of fights Cutter had been in over the course of his law enforcement career hadn’t really been fights at all, but someone trying to get away while Cutter attempted to stop them. The trouble was, Pringle was running toward a gun.

It was dangerous to deploy a Taser on someone on the stairs, but more dangerous still to let them get to a firearm. Cutter saw the red laser dots settle, one between Pringle’s hairy shoulder blades, the other in the geographic center of his buttocks.

“Jarome Pring—” Lola said. He started to run again. “Tase, Tase, Tase!” Lola barked.

There was an audible snap as the nitrogen canisters popped the plastic gates off the front of the cartridge, propelling twin barbed darts on gossamer wires, angling slightly to give a greater coverage, meaning more muscles for the electrical current to disrupt. The barbs followed the red laser dots. Pringle went rigid, the banister post at the base of the stairs arresting his fall and sending him sideways onto the landing. Onlookers might think Cutter stuck out his boot to give Pringle a kick, but in reality, he was making sure the man’s head didn’t smack the tile floor as he fell.

“Hands!” Lola snapped. She was the one holding the Taser, so she gave the commands.

Pringle moaned. He’d knocked a tooth out on the pillar at the bottom of the stairs and it lay on the ground beside his face.

“You bitch . . .”

“More where that came from,” Lola said. “Hands behind your back.”

Teetering on his belly, the outlaw complied, hesitantly lifting his flabby arms so she didn’t shock him again.

Cutter was closer, so he moved in to apply the handcuffs. Pringle’s back was as wide as a barn door, and Cutter had to use two linked sets in order to pull both wrists close enough together.

A heavy clunk thudded from somewhere on the upper floor at the same moment the radio on Cutter’s belt squawked. He ratcheted on the cuffs and drew his Colt.

Sean Blodgett’s voice poured into the room. “White female and white male looking out the top-floor window, boss. Might be Shiloh Watts. Pretty sure the male is Corbin McGrone. Both are 10-99.”

10-99 meant the warrant gods were smiling. Bycatch, or scooping up unintended targets when rounding up a fugitive, was common enough. Like fell in with like—and fugitives running from the law tended to do their running in groups.

Another thud came from upstairs, then a woman’s scream—long and piercing.

“Bronnnnncooooo!” It was a cry of anger, not ecstasy.

Lola mouthed the name. “Bronco?”

“That’s what it sounded like,” Cutter said.

“Go ahead,” Alvarez whispered. “I’ve got this one.”

Pringle’s body effectively dammed the bottom of the steps, forcing Lola and Cutter both to jump over top of him.

Few things compelled Arliss Cutter to run faster than a scream. He forced himself to move methodically but quickly. Colt Python moving in concert with his eyes as he took each step, he brought the second floor into view bit by bit. Lola stayed two steps back, giving herself room to maneuver if things went south.

The woman wailed. . .