Cold Snap: Arliss Cutter, Book 4

Book 4: Arliss Cutter Novel

by Marc Cameron

Genres: Mystery; Thrillers

Synopsis

“Cameron’s books are riveting page-turners.”—Mark Greaney, #1 New York Times bestselling author
 
The bestselling author of the latest Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan novels delivers an adrenaline-filled new thriller featuring Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter! Stranded with three violent prisoners in the deadly Alaskan wilderness, Cutter will become the hunter and the hunted…

After an early spring thaw on the Alaskan coast, Anchorage police discover a gruesome new piece of evidence in their search for a serial killer: a dismembered human foot.
 
In Kincaid Park, a man is arrested for attacking a female jogger. Investigators believe they have finally have their suspect. But one deputy is sure they have the wrong man.
 
In the remote northern town of Deadhorse, Alaska, Supervisory Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter escorts four very dangerous handcuffed prisoners onto a small bush plane en route to Fairbanks. Cutter’s expecting a routine mission and a nonstop flight—or so he thinks. When the plane goes down in the wilderness, all hell breaks loose. The prisoners murder the pilot and a guard and torch the plane. But their nightmare’s just beginning. Back in Anchorage, deputy Lola Teariki has traced the dismembered foot to a missing girl—and the serial psychopath who slaughtered her.
 
It’s one of the prisoners on Cutter’s flight…
 
Now it’s a deadly game of survival. With no means of communication, few supplies, and ravenous grizzly bears and wolves lurking in the shadows, Cutter has to battle the unforgiving elements while the killer wants his head on a stick. Here in Alaska, nature can be cruel—but this time, human nature is crueler…
 
“Well-developed characters complement the nonstop action. Cameron viscerally conveys Alaska’s austere beauty as well as its unexpected dangers.” – Publishers Weekly 
 

Release date: April 26, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

The bow of the little skiff slammed into another frigid wave, sending Supervisory Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter’s badge flying out the collar of his immersion suit. The silver circle-star hung suspended in the air as Cutter caught a chatter of icy sea spray full in the face. He gasped and tucked the badge and neck chain back down the front of his suit, snugging the zipper all the way to his chin for the duration of the ride.

Cutter rubbed seawater off his face with the back of a neoprene glove, getting a better look at the Russian ship a quarter mile ahead. Salt stung Cutter’s eyes, making him hyperaware of the scratches on his cornea he’d gotten from flying rock debris in Juneau less than two weeks before. The wounds weren’t quite healed, but Cutter squinted through the sting and, as with much else in his life, kept it to himself.

There were four of them in the little skiff, all wearing bright orange Mustang exposure suits with wide reflective SOLAS patches on each shoulder. The insulated coveralls were supposed to give them an extra few minutes before they succumbed to hypothermia if anyone fell overboard in the thirty-nine-degree water, but the main purpose was to protect him from the wind and waves. Cutter suspected the most realistic benefit would be as a brightly colored visual aid to the Coast Guard in body recovery.

The dark hulk of the Russian freighter pitching in the sea ahead stood out in stark contrast to the snow-covered mountains that loomed over the semi-protected anchorage.

Another green-water wave swelled before the boat. Cutter had been in worse seas, and he’d spent countless hours in small boats, but never at the same time. He braced himself, feeling the Colt Python under his Mustang suit wedge against the aluminum gunnel.

They wallowed up the brow of the swell—not huge as swells went, maybe a six-footer, but big enough to toss the skiff around. The prop on the 150-horse Honda outboard growled in protest, cavitating as the little boat crested the swell, and picked up speed racing down the backside. They smashed the bottom of the trough hard enough to loosen fillings, bringing a sheepish grin from the youthful driver clinging to the wheel at the center console.

His name was Spence, a tall, oafish kid with an easy smile and sophomoric attitude that probably got his ass kicked a lot in high school. He was so far out of his depth as to be laughable, had boating over bone-chilling water to board a hostile ship been a laughing matter.

Cutter had seized dozens of vessels as a deputy in Florida—a huge Bayliner belonging to a podiatrist convicted of Medicare fraud, cigarette boats used by narco terrorists, an entire shrimping fleet, and even a cruise ship the owners of which had gotten crossways with the EPA for dumping 15,000 gallons of raw sewage overboard within three miles of shore.

Working on the water could go from mundane to dangerous in a quick minute—unhappy skippers, glowering crew, and rats . . . there always seemed to be rats.

Someone who did not know Arliss Cutter might blame his stony expression on the prospect of boarding the massive Russian ship looming on a lumpy sea ahead. Perhaps he was angry to find himself getting pelted with rain and spin-drift in an open aluminum boat in the Bering Sea when he could have been floating in the sunshine in his home state of Florida. Or maybe the turbulent 800-mile flight from Anchorage to Dutch Harbor had left him feeling bilious.

In truth, Cutter was smiling inside. Rain or shine, danger or calm, on all but the rarest occasions Arliss Cutter’s face brimmed with all the glee of an Easter Island statue.

Spence continued to bounce the little boat across Broad Bay toward Magdalena Murmansk, the 107-meter Russian ship moored to the emergency buoy west of Unalaska. Cutter’s partner, Deputy Lola Teariki, sat amidships, hunkered down with her back to the bench, using her bent legs as shock absorbers. Jimmy McElroy, a rawboned local hard hat diver and ships’ pilot, sat near the bow, across from Cutter.

One moment Cutter and the other passengers on the insignificant little craft found themselves at the bottom of a valley staring at walls of dark water all around them, then the next saw them thrust upward on the peak of a quavering swell. Each time they rose, the dark blue hulk of the Magdalena Murmansk hove into view, pitching and bobbing as if trying to escape its mooring.

The idea of pulling alongside the freighter at least twenty times longer than the skiff didn’t appear to bother young Spence for the moment. He was trying to impress Lola with his vast knowledge of the sea—and in that endeavor, he was sinking. Fast.

At least once a day another law enforcement officer, or even a recently arrested fugitive, tried to flirt with Deputy Lola Tuakana Teariki, Cutter’s partner on the US Marshals Alaska Fugitive Task Force.

Spence had started innocently enough, complimenting her hair as she boarded the skiff, but then turning the conversation quickly to his healthy blond beard—which he thought made him look more like an old-time sailor, and how he was thinking of taking up pipe smoking to bolster that image on his Instagram account. He lost a few more points when he rushed to help her put on an auto-inflating life vest. The ride from the docks to the ship was estimated to take twenty minutes, and the kid had spent the first ten telling enough sea stories for a man three times his age. Cutter and McElroy had ignored him for the most part, chalking his behavior up to the hormonal flush of youth. Lola Teariki sat hunkered in her spot amidships, shielded from the wind, but fully exposed to Spence’s bluster. Of Cook Island Maori descent, she’d tucked thick black hair beneath a waterproof nor’easter rain hat. High cheekbones and mahogany eyes peeked above the collar of her Mustang suit.

Everyone on the skiff emerged from their private thoughts as they neared the Russian ship, and Spence’s words floated to the surface again.

“. . . gotta love the smell of the sea,” Cutter heard him say. The kid had to yell above the whining outboard and chatter of water against the metal hull. Already sure of himself, the shouting made him sound extra committed to each and every word he spoke.

Lola shook her head, heaving a heavy sigh that was visible even in the thick overalls.

“That’s not the sea,” she said.

Spence canted his head, giddy for any sign he’d gotten her to speak with him, but unaware of the dangers that lay in that endeavor.

“What’s not the sea?”

Lola smiled broadly, a lioness savoring her meal before she tucked into it.

“That odor you’re smelling—”

The kid cut her off. “It’s great, isn’t it? I think I was born for the sea, the smell of it just—”

It was Lola’s turn to interrupt. “That’s the smell of land,” she shouted. “Where it meets the sea. If you’d ever been out to sea, I mean truly out in blue water, you know that the ocean smells clean if you can smell it at all. You’re breathing in the odor of rotting kelp, boat fuel, and unlucky fish who’ve gotten themselves caught at low tide.” She shrugged. “But you can think of it as the smell of the sea if you want to. Whatever floats your boat.”

“I-I guess that’s . . . I mean—”

Cutter came to the rescue. The kid was harmless, just too self-absorbed to realize Lola came from a seafaring culture and might know a thing or two about Mother Ocean.

“They’re expecting a diver to clear the prop.” Cutter pointed a gloved hand at the Russian freighter, now less than a hundred meters away. “They don’t know how many of us are coming aboard, but it’s best they think we’re all here to support Mr. McElroy until we’re on the bridge.”

“Copy that,” Lola said, going over her part of the plan. Teeth clenched, she arched her back against the seat, stretching her arms skyward with a shudder born of sitting too long on the floor of the boat. “I’ll shoot a text to the Coasties as soon as we make it up the ladder and our boots hit the deck.”

The US Coast Guard cutter Douglas Munro patrolled a few miles away. Named for the only Coast Guardsman to ever be awarded the Medal of Honor, the 378-foot Hamilton Class high-endurance cutter was a frequent visitor to the Bering Sea. Armed with numerous heavy deck guns and a MH-65 Dolphin helicopter, the Douglas Munro would provide the seafaring muscle to back up the deputies’ swagger once they were aboard the ship.

At least that was the theory.

Magdalena Murmansk had visited Dutch Harbor the year before, sailing as the Pravda. The outlines of the foot-high letters were still visible under several coats of flaking blue paint on either side of the ship’s prow. As Pravda, the ship that eventually became the Magdalena engaged in a series of violations of maritime and US law, accepting a dozen vehicles that were believed to have been stolen from a smaller cargo vessel sailing out of the Port of Anchorage. Pravda had been captained then by a Russian named Koslov—the same man who’d called in her most recent mechanical troubles that required her to moor to the emergency buoy in Broad Bay.

She’d run across a submerged cable two days prior, fouling her prop badly enough to require a hard hat diver to go down and cut it out. The observant skipper of F/V Violet Dawn, a pacific cod trawler, happened to be a recently retired Alaska State Trooper familiar with the vehicle smuggling case. The harbor master slow-walked his response for assistance to the Magdelina long enough that the former trooper could get word to the US Marshals in Anchorage, who held the maritime court order to seize the vessel. With all her ops deputy marshals tied up in court, injured, or detailed to special assignments in other parts of the country, Chief Deputy Jill Phillips had assigned Cutter and Teariki from the fugitive task force to fly out and nab the Magdalena. Cutter went where he was pointed, and Lola Teariki was always up for something new, so long as she got in her daily workout. Fortunately, the Grand Aleutian Hotel had a serviceable gym—which she’d visited twice in the twelve hours since they’d arrived.

Spence slowed when they were still twenty yards from the Magdalena, allowing the skiff to settle and wallow on the waves, momentum and the currents shoving her forward. The pilot’s or “shell” door through which they would have to enter the cargo ship was fifteen feet up the side of the pitching vessel. A swell thrust the ship upward at the same time the skiff surfed into a trough, putting the pilot’s door almost thirty feet above them. A moment later, when the swells and troughs switched places, the angles reversed as well, making it look as if they could jump straight across the water and into the opening. A simple misstep, faulty lines, or a rogue swell might drop any one of them between the two vessels—grinding them to paste.

There was a reason Marshals Service policy forbade deputies to board ships on the open ocean. Theoretically, the mooring buoy would be safer—but the sea didn’t appear to realize that.

Cutter looked up at the pitching ship and then back to a grinning Lola Teariki. She wanted assignments that were new and interesting—and she was about to get her wish.

There was something undeniably sinister about the Russian ship—somber faces of the two crewmen peering down from the pilot’s door, lines of rust weeping from beneath flaking hull paint, and something else that Cutter couldn’t put his finger on. A flutter in his gut.

Despite his sophomoric flirting with Lola, Spence turned out to be a steady boat driver and brought the little launch expertly alongside the mooring buoy. McElroy tied off the bow, and both the ship and skiff began to rise and drop in time with the swells. The danger of getting crushed if any of them fell between the two vessels was lessened slightly, but was far from nonexistent.

A rope ladder with iffy-looking sun-bleached wooden rungs banged against the hull, held away only slightly from the sloping metal by a weathered piece of lumber that rested on large stopper knots in the ropes at the base of the door. Regulations stated a ship’s pilot—the local person who guided the way in to each port—had to be able to board via a ladder that was no more than nine meters from the water’s surface. The skipper of the Magdalena Murmansk apparently fretted over that regulation as much as he did about transporting stolen cars. It was impossible to be sure from his angle in the skiff, but Cutter estimated the climb was well above thirty feet if the swells weren’t timed just right.

Cutter caught the ladder at the bottom of its dive, riding it upward as a swell lifted the larger ship. Rain and sea spray slicked the rungs, and he tested each treacherous step as he climbed, alternating hands and feet to retain his balance on the swaying ropes. His two sidearms—his grandfather’s Colt Python revolver and the regulation Glock that kept him in Marshals Service policy, were hidden beneath the thick orange Mustang suit—which meant they were also difficult to access. The sailors who helped him aboard, both young men bundled in wool hats and foul-weather slickers, welcomed him with disinterested grunts, assuming he was part of the team come to untangle the propeller. Their Turkic features brightened when Lola Teariki peeked over the rail and grabbed their offered hands. The Magdalena Murmansk probably had few female visitors. The taller of the two removed his wool watch cap and wrung it in both fists, attempting small talk in halting, broken English.

With the sailors’ attention on Lola, McElroy hauled himself aboard, using the upright posts at the top of the rope ladder.

“Your captain?” McElroy said, interrupting, if not breaking, the spell Teariki had over the men.

“Da,” the tall sailor said, stretching the hat back over his buzzed head. He had a small and crudely drawn tattoo of a dolphin under his left eye. He glanced aft, toward the raised whitewashed wheelhouse that loomed two stories above the main deck, then back at McElroy as if he wasn’t too keen about going to see his boss.

Captain Dimitri Koslov stood with his knuckly hands clasped behind his back, large beak of a nose to the window peering down at the newcomers. His angular face dripped with the disdain of a pirate toward the lesser folk who allowed themselves to be constrained by the petty laws of man. Koslov kept the thermostat in the wheelhouse cranked up high, allowing him to wear his preferred T-shirt and cargo shorts no matter what kind of gales blew out on deck. It was good for his crew to see the scars—the bite of a tiger shark that had taken much of his left calf muscle, the obscenely white flesh left behind on forearms from molten metal during a deck fire when he’d been a much younger man. Lines from a broken vodka bottle webbed the bald flesh over his right temple and down the side of his ruddy check, visible even when he wore a hat. All were constant and helpful reminders to the crew that their captain was a man accustomed to great pain. At six feet two with hardly an ounce of fat, Dimitri Koslov seemed a knotty rope of bone and joint and sinew. His men often described him as “a bag of hammers,” and he liked that very much.

Vasiliev, a blond man with an equally angular face who served as first officer, informed him the American underwater welder wanted an audience before he got to work on the cable.

Still facing the window, Koslov gave an almost imperceptible nod.

Koslov needed the Americans to cut the fouled propeller free of cable, but he wanted them off his ship as soon as possible. There was far too much at stake to have strangers nosing around.

The captain tilted his head sideways, as if to gain a better vantage point. “Is that . . . ? Did he bring a woman with him?”

“It would seem so, Captain,” Vasiliev said.

Nikolai Nikolaevich, the knock-kneed Ukrainian boy standing watch by the helm, glanced up. In his late teens, he had a pale, round face and blue eyes that seemed always on the verge of tears. The other crewmen would look at any woman on the ship as possible companionship. The boy would certainly think of her as a mother, someone who might rescue him from his rough crewmates.

Koslov did not approve of women on his ship, but he had to admit that this was a handsome one. She’d unzipped her heavy orange survival suit shortly after coming on board and was on the mobile phone with someone. He’d sailed enough of the world’s seas to recognize a Polynesian beauty when he saw one.

Every man on the bridge, including young Nikolai, moved to the window and pressed his nose against the glass for a better look.

“It is good these waters are so cold,” Koslov said. “Otherwise I am afraid some of the men would jump ship.”

“My thoughts exactly,” the first officer said. “Who do you suppose she is talking to, Captain?”

Koslov licked his lips, then stepped away from the window, shaking his head. Beautiful woman or not, strangers on this boat would be a problem. “Their launch driver perhaps,” he said. “It does not matter. Get them working at once. I want to be free of this place an hour ago!”

Footsteps clanged on the metal ladder outside as the boarding party made their way up to the bridge. The door creaked open and one of the crewmen, an Azerbaijani named Yaadan, who was fond of giving himself crude tattoos, ushered the three visitors inside and then excused himself.

Koslov recognized the hard hat welder, from the McElroy Diving website—but a large blond man stepped forward as if he were the one in charge. The captain bristled immediately, sensing danger. He glanced back and forth, figuring the odds. The girl would be no problem—but Nikolai would be no help. That left the engineer, the first officer, a radio man, and Koslov to deal with McElroy and the frowning blond man.

“Are you the captain?” the big man said, staring at Koslov with blue eyes as cold as the sea outside.

The Russian gave a curt nod, fists clenching at the same time his stomach sank. This man was law enforcement, or military, maybe both. The lines were often blurred at sea. Either way, he was going to be a problem.

Koslov wanted them off his ship—fast.

Cutter had unzipped the Mustang suit to the waist by the time he reached the bridge, giving him access to his credentials, the paperwork, and his sidearm if it came to that.

The inside of the wheelhouse was sweltering and smelled like pine disinfectant, absent of all but the faintest hint of grease and human body odor.

Cutter locked eyes with the mass of scars wearing a T-shirt and shorts.

“You are the ship’s master . . . ?”

“Captain Koslov,” the skipper said, eyes flitting between Cutter and the door. He spoke heavily accented English, phlegmy, like a TV spy villain. “I am guessing you are not here to fix propeller?”

Cutter shook his head. “Afraid not, sir.” He used his left hand to hold up the black leather case displaying the silver circle-star—keeping his right hand free. “Pursuant to a court order and maritime warrant of arrest in rem, I am seizing the vessel formerly known as Pravda and now known as the Magdalena Murmansk. A hearing date will be set at the United States Courthouse in Anchorage. I’ll leave you a copy of the paperwork. There’s a telephone number that the attorneys representing the shipping company may call with any questions.”

Captain Koslov nodded again, slower this time, then barked something to a sad-looking boy who seemed to be trying to melt into the corner of the wheelhouse. Whatever he said caused the boy’s mouth to fall open in dismay. He shook his head. The captain repeated himself, sterner this time. The boy raised both hands, continuing to resist. Cutter didn’t speak Russian, but he understood the word nyet when he heard it.

Koslov took a menacing step toward the youth, as if he might strike him. Cutter moved to intercept, but another man whom Cutter took to be the first officer, raised both hands.

“I will go, Captain,” the man said in English. “Please forgive young Nikolai Nikolaevich. He is frightened.”

Lola Teariki gave the first officer a wary side-eye. When she was tense or tired, she spoke with the shortened vowels and nonexistent Rs of her father’s Kiwi accent. “What’s he scared of?”

“You are taking ship,” the first officer said. “She is our . . . livelihood. Intercom is down, so Captain asked him to go inform engineering.”

The boy stared at the floor, shoulders quaking.

“We’ll let the crew know in a minute,” Cutter said.

Koslov picked a bit of lint off his T-shirt and flicked it toward Cutter. “There are only three of you,” he said. “How do you propose to take my ship with such small party?”

“You are in United States waters, and I seized this vessel pursuant to a lawful court order.”

Koslov pursed his lips in thought and then smiled. “You think to board my vessel like some Somali pirate in Tom Hanks movie. And yet, you have only three pirates.” Koslov thumbed his chest and wagged his head. “I have crew of nineteen men. Maybe they not comply with order of American pirate court. What you say to that, Mr. ‘I am captain now’?”

“I say I have a lot more than three,” Cutter said, nodding toward the bow.

The radio man said something in rapid-fire Russian.

It was Lola’s turn to sneer. “I’m guessing he just told you that a very large US Coast Guard cutter is bearing down on us as we speak.”

Captain Koslov gazed out the window, seeming to look well past the approaching Douglas Munro—a thousand-yard stare. At length he pounded a fist into his palm.

“Very well,” he said. “The ship is yours. What will become of crew? You have . . . what do you call... ‘arrest in rem’ warrants for us as well?”

Cutter shook his head. “Immigration officials will be out shortly to get you all processed and returned home.”

“I see,” the captain said. He barked something in Russian again.

The first officer turned to leave, but Lola sidestepped, blocking his path.

“What’s your hurry?” she asked. “The ship’s not going anywhere.”

“I follow Captain’s orders,” the first officer said through a saccharine smile. “I will go tell crew now to listen to you.”

Lola shot a glance at Cutter.

The boy piped up. “He lie!”

The veins on Koslov’s neck bulged. His face flushed bright red. “Ublyudok!”

Young Nikolai plowed ahead. “Captain order me throw in sea, drown before you find—”

Koslov snatched a two-foot piece of steel pipe from the chart table and rushed the hapless boy.

Cutter planted a boot hard on the side of the man’s knee. Koslov screamed, listing sideways, the joint bending a direction knees were not designed to bend. Far from out, the captain spun swinging the pipe at Cutter. It whooshed past, inches from his nose.

Cutter was vaguely aware of the first officer moving to assist his boss and heard the loud smack as Lola gave him a slap across the ear to change his mind. Breaking someone’s eardrum didn’t exactly fall within the Marshals use of force policy, but they were on their own until the Coast Guard arrived. This wasn’t the time to tiptoe gently into an arrest, especially after the captain orders someone thrown overboard.

Cutter waded in on the Russian’s backswing, closing the gap and getting inside the steel pipe before he could swing it again. Cutter caught Koslov under the chin with the heel of his hand, pushing up, then rolling over and straight down toward the deck—as if spiking a basketball.

Koslov dropped the length of pipe, flailing in vain to catch himself as he fell backward, snapping one wrist in the process and likely spraining the other.

Cutter kicked the pipe away and looked back and forth between Koslov and the boy. He spoke slowly, unsure of how much English Nikolai understood.

“Throw who overboard?”

“My job,” the boy said, tears in his eyes. “My job . . . take care of them. They so beautiful. He say to me throw over before you find.”

“Beautiful?” Lola took a half step forward. “What are you talking about? Throw who over? Are there prisoners on this ship?”

Koslov spoke through clenched teeth, clutching his shattered wrist, grimacing in pain as he glared at Nikolai. “Zatkni past!”

The boy ignored him, looking from Cutter to Teariki, pleading.

“Frantsuzskiy . . . I not know how you say . . .”

Lola brightened. “France? French?”

Nikolai nodded. “Yes! French shchenok.”

Lola shook her head, butchering the pronunciation. “Shenak?”

The first officer slumped. “Puppies,” he whispered. “French bulldog puppies.”

Cutter cocked his head. “Puppies?”

Nikolai nodded. “Much valuable.”

The first officer, seeing where this was going, rubbed a hand over his face and turned to Cutter. “Captain buys puppies from breeder in Russia. One hundred dollars for each. He sells in Seattle for fifteen hundred dollars. Big profit. Small risk. Not like drugs.”

“How many puppies are we talking about?” Cutter asked.

The first officer rubbed his face again, speaking through his fingers. “Three hundred.”

Nikolai gave an emphatic nod. “Yes. But many puppy is very sick . . .”

Lola twitched, looking like she might jump out of her skin at any moment. Cutter released her with a nod.

She gave Nikolai a tap on the shoulder. “You come with me. Let’s go check on those sick puppies.”

“Hang on,” Cutter said. “Do we need to worry about the crew?”

The first officer shook his head. “They hate captain,” he said. “Will be happy.”

Koslov grabbed a wood handrail on the chart table and attempted to pull himself up. Bloodshot eyes bored holes into Cutter. “You . . . you have no right to do this on my ship—”

“Oh no.” Cutter tapped the stack of documents on the chart table with the handcuffs he’d gotten from his belt. “This is my ship.”

“What is to happen to me?”

“That depends,” Cutter said, head down, eyes narrowed, “on the condition of the pups down in your hold.”

Cutter had briefed Customs and Border Protection officials in Unalaska before the seizure, and it took them less than an hour to get personnel on-site. Spence had to move the skiff off the mooring buoy in order to give them space to board. The Douglas Munro hove to off the bow of the Magdalena Murmansk, the deck guns on the 378-foot US Coast Guard vessel a big-stick reminder to the Russian crew that they should comply with the marshals’ orders.

Cutter and Teariki charged the captain with assault on a federal officer. Immigration officials saw to the crew, including young Nikolai, to whom Cutter gave his cell phone number.

Customs officials begrudgingly took custody of the three hundred squirming and hungry French bulldog puppies that were now evidence against Captain Koslov in a soon to be filed smuggling charge.

Lola’s phone buzzed as they waited on Magdalena’s deck while the skiffs were jockeyed around for their transport back to Dutch Harbor/Unalaska.

They were in the middle of a prisoner move, surrounded by men who wouldn’t mind terribly if they fell in the sea, but Cutter nodded at her to take it, in case it was something to do with the vessel seizure.

She cupped her hand over the phone to block the wind, listened intently, then ended the call. Her lips were set in a tight line when she turned to face Cutter.

“Everything okay?” he asked. Lola was not one to overreact to a phone call—or much of anything.

She shook her head. “That was a friend of mine from the Troopers. Another body washed up out near Beluga Point. APD is on scene working it now.”

Koslov turned up his nose and muttered, “Decadent, murderous Americans . . .”

Cutter ignored him. “A body?”

“Yeah.” Lola groaned. “Well . . . a piece of one anyway.”

Anchorage, Alaska

“Don’t even say the words serial killer,” Officer Sandra Jackson said over her shoulder, sliding down the loose shale on the sea side of the Alaska Railroad right of way. “It riles up the brass.”

It was just past eight in the morning, in the hours where midnight shift and day shift overlapped—offering light that mid-shifters like Officer Joe Bill Brackett were not accustomed to after a long, dark winter. Low clouds clung to the mountains directly across the Seward Highway. Turnagain Arm had some hellacious tides with over thirty feet of fluctuation when the moon was full. When the tide went out, it left the shallow arm of Cook Inlet looking like a desert moonscape. If conditions were just right, the incoming tide rushed in all at once, in a long, continuous wall of silty water called a bore tide.

Tourists and locals alike lined the pullouts along the Seward Highway to watch the phenomenon. Once the jagged pad ice was gone, surfers would don dry suits and ride the wave in. The latest bore tide had come in the middle of the night, not huge, just a four-footer. That was six hours ago—and the tide was out now, leaving barren sand, scattered chunks of muddy ice—

And a body.

Spitting rain plastered locks of dirty-blond hair to Jackson’s forehead. She wore little makeup, but what she did have around her eyes was smudged from standing so long in the weather, and maybe, Brackett thought, vomiting into the bushes before he got there. She was in her early twenties, about Brackett’s age, but with a couple of years seniority in the departm. . .