Stone Cross

Book 2: Arliss Cutter Novel

by Marc Cameron

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

In a remote Alaskan village, Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter searches for a stone-cold killer amid a hotbed of corruption, lies, and long-buried secrets.

Winter comes early to the rural native community of Stone Cross, Alaska--and so does hunting season. Caribou and moose are a major source of food through the long, dark months ahead. But Arliss Cutter has come here for a very different game. A federal judge is receiving death threats and refuses protection. Cutter and his deputy Lola Teariki have been assigned to shadow him on his trip to this icy outland to make sure that he's safe. But they quickly discover that no one is ever really safe in a place like this. And no one is above suspicion . . .
When Cutter and Lola arrive, the village is already gripped with fear. A young couple has disappeared from their fishing lodge, just eight miles upriver. Their handyman has been found dead, next to a crude drawing of a mysterious symbol. To make matters worse, a dense fog has descended on the region, isolating the town from civilization. With the judge's life still at risk, and two people still missing, Cutter and Lola have their work cut out for them. But navigating the small-town customs and blood-bound traditions of this close-knit community won't be easy. When the secrets come out, the deadly hunt is on.

"Cameron's books are riveting." MARK GREANEY

Release date: March 31, 2020

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 448

Sample

Anchorage, Alaska

In addition to being a heroin addict, Nicky Ranucci was also an extremely talented chef. Unfortunately, the thirty-year-old junkie could never remember to turn off the stove, and his mother’s four-plex burned down around what was probably the best bucatini carbonara anyone in Alaska would have ever tasted.

Worse than that, Ranucci found himself in jail and in desperate need of a fix—which meant he ended up in the back seat of a government SUV with tinted windows, sitting next to a mountain of a deputy US marshal who frowned like someone had just fed him a spider.

Fortunately for Ranucci, he had something to trade. And it was good stuff too. With any luck, it would be enough to get him out. Feeding a six-hundred-dollar-a-week heroin habit put Ranucci in constant contact with the worst of humanity, the kind of dudes who prayed to their patron saint one minute, then preyed on some hooker’s addiction the next. Ranucci was a small fry, a user. The cops wanted the big fish and he intended to give them one in trade for his freedom. In this case, the big fish was Twig Ripley, a dealer and leg-breaker who was wanted for selling black tar heroin in Nevada. Lucky for Ranucci, Twig had burned every bridge he had from Vegas to Northern Cali and had come to hide out with his cousin Sam, who owned a used-car lot in Anchorage.

The lady marshal behind the steering wheel drove past a sign that said HONEST SAM’S HONEST CARS. She was hot, if a little scary looking. Hawaiian or something like that.

Ranucci’s gut churned. Snitching could get him killed. Someday. But he had to think about the here and now, the shit that was staring him dead in the eye at this very moment. Turning rat was better than the alternative. Getting sick. That’s what they called it. What a joke. Sick was nothing compared to coming off heroin. Sick was puking up your lunch. Withdrawal was having your skull opened with a chisel while someone scraped out your brain with a spoon. Overdosing was what killed you, and they had Narcan for that. Getting clean sure as hell felt like dying. The jail doc had given him methadone, but not nearly enough, and it just made him thirsty.

People kept telling Ranucci he was lucky to be alive. But he didn’t feel lucky.

He’d escaped the fire with the clothes on his back and a Crown Royal bag that contained a burned spoon, a well-used insulin syringe with a bent needle, and a gram of black tar. None of the junkies he knew ever had any luck, and the kit had fallen out of his shirt when the firefighters were helping him to safety. Some cop, who should have been minding his own business on the fire perimeter, saw the whole thing. Everyone knew the purple whiskey bags were the worst possible place to stash drug paraphernalia, but they were just so damned convenient. Nicky’s mom had never used anything stronger than aspirin, but she did love her Crown Royal and had collected enough of the bags over the years to make a couple of quilts, a Christmas-tree skirt, and a big curtain for the missing door to her spare bedroom—all of which Nicky had just torched along with the carbonara.

Now, a day after the fire, he found himself handcuffed in the back seat of a Ford Expedition dying of thirst—an aftereffect of the damned methadone. The big, blond deputy sat in the back seat too, hands folded quietly in his lap. Gray clouds hung low over the squat, earth-tone buildings, spitting rain on midtown Anchorage. The side streets off Arctic Avenue were paved—contrary to what people in the lower forty-eight believed about Alaska roads—but a layer of gravel from last year’s winter maintenance caused the tires to crackle and pop as the SUV rolled slowly south. Ranucci wished the pretty Polynesian lady in the driver’s seat would speed up. The dark Expedition was obvious enough. Rolling slowly through this kind of neighborhood left no doubt in anybody’s mind that this cop car was hunting.

Ranucci strained against the metal chain that secured the handcuffs to his waist. He pushed the bologna sandwich toward his mouth with the tips of his fingers, craning his neck down in an effort to reach it. This jailhouse lunch was a far cry from bucatini carbonara, but it was food, and anyway, it was nice to eat it somewhere that didn’t smell like farts. The marshals would probably have him out past evening chow too—which was okay. The jail would just hold another sandwich for him if he missed whatever slop they happened to be serving that night.

The big marshal looked over at him across the back seat, sun-bleached hair mussed like a surfer who’d been chillin’ on the beach. His name was Cutter, and if his stony expression held anything, it was the remnants of a disappointed sigh, like when you let your grandma know college wasn’t in your cards—or told your mom that you’d just burned down her house. Deputy Cutter said nothing, but his disgust was apparent in his narrowed eyes.

Nobody liked a snitch, not even the cops.

Alaska state court judges were notoriously soft with their conditions of release, but Ranucci’s record was “deep, wide, and continuous” enough that he didn’t qualify to bond out on his own recognizance. That was kind of a joke anyway: nobody but a judge was ignorant enough to believe that a tweaker who’d rip off his own mother for a score could be trusted to show up for breakfast, let alone a court appearance. In the end, the judge had set a five-hundred-dollar cash bond. It was low enough to elicit an eye roll from the arresting officer, but, considering the fact that the forty-three dollars Ranucci did have went up in flames with his mother’s Crown Royal curtains, bond may as well have been set at a million. He’d been forced to turn to the only coin he had to trade when it came to dealing with “the man.” It was good information, the stuff he was offering about Twig, but Deputy Cutter didn’t seem all that happy to get it. Maybe he just wasn’t a happy guy. Ranucci didn’t care, so long as they let him out once he’d cooperated.

The muscle under his right eye began to twitch. He rattled the restraints, softly; some cops took it real personal when you made noise with the chains.

“Any chance I get you to take these cuffs off so I can get a drink?” He shrugged, but it came off as a sort of spastic twitch. “Seeing as I’m helping and all. That jungle juice they have me take at the jail gives me a powerful thirst. Know what I mean?”

The lady marshal behind the wheel glanced in the rearview mirror, catching his eye. Ranucci had heard the others call her Lola. She wore her black hair pulled back in a tight bun, which made her look a little stark for Ranucci’s taste. She couldn’t be over twenty-five, and even in his present circumstances, he couldn’t help but imagine her shaking out the bun and letting her hair down. Nicky, sweetie, how about you and me . . .

“Jungle juice?” she asked.

“Methadone,” the big marshal grunted.

The pretty Polynesian nodded slowly, adding another term to her lexicon of street slang, and returned her focus to the wet street.

Ranucci set the sandwich in his lap, exchanging it for a paper cup and straw he held between his knees. He’d already drained it twice.

Cutter poured him some more water from a plastic bottle.

Nicky drank it all immediately. The water gave him a little courage. “Ma’am,” he said, earning himself a side-eye from the big deputy beside him.

Deputy Lola looked in the rearview mirror. “Yes?”

“Can I ask what you are?”

Her eyes were stones in the mirror, unreadable.

“What I am? I’m a deputy US marshal.”

“No,” Nicky said. “I mean, I was just wondering if you were Samoan or Hawaiian or what.”

She made a buzzer noise. “Wrong,” she said. “None of the above. Cook Island Maori.”

“Maori,” Nicky said, giving a little nod like he understood, though he did not. Then it dawned on him. “Like the New Zealand guys with those scary tattoos, who do that dance.”

“Very good,” Deputy Lola said.

“I read they were savages until the eighteen hundreds, when the missionaries came.”

“Savages?” Lola chuckled.

“That’s what I read,” Nicky said. “I read they were cannibals.”

“You know,” Deputy Lola said, staring at him in the rearview mirror. “Those are my people you’re talking about. I’m one of those savages.”

Nicky gave a nervous chuckle. “But you’re not a cannibal.”

Deputy Lola’s eyes grew wide as saucers in the mirror, showing their whites. At the same time, she drew her lips back in a horrifying grimace that nearly made him piss his pants.

“I could be,” she said.

Ranucci looked away, then gave the chains another rattle.

“How about it, Marshal? What do you say about the cuffs?”

Cutter looked him in the eye long enough to make him uncomfortable—which didn’t take very long—and then gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, less than Mount Rushmore moved in the wind. “You’re doin’ great.”

Lola spoke over her shoulder again. “Sure you don’t want a burger?”

Yeah, she was hot all right. She looked like she could kick his ass, but it would almost be worth it for the physical contact . . .

Deputy Lola snapped her fingers to bring him out of his stupor. “A Big Mac or something? Jailhouse bologna can’t be very tasty.”

“I’m good.” Ranucci used the shoulder of his tan scrubs to wipe mustard off the corner of his mouth. “Guys in my cellblock would smell it on my breath and beat my ass. Snitches get stitches. Know what I mean? They’d figure I did something to earn the reward.”

Ranucci’s mouth watered at the idea of an actual hamburger. He closed his eyes and tried not to imagine food beyond what he got in Cook Inlet Pretrial. Life inside was hard enough for a wigged-out junkie. It would be impossible for a snitch with a burger on his breath. He groaned, and craned his neck again to reach the last of his sandwich, since he wasn’t about to get any help with the chains.

Deputy Cutter was obviously the boss, but for some reason the big guy had opted to sit in the back of the SUV with the prisoner and let the pretty Hawaiian drive. Maybe the two of them had something going. Ranucci had enough experience with cops to know that the senior guy rarely took a seat next to a junkie. Hell, Nicky Ranucci wouldn’t have sat next to himself if he could have avoided it. And there was the whole partner thing, friends, confidants, badges with benefits . . . He’d heard about the PD’s no booty on duty policy. Policies like that didn’t happen without a reason.

Deputy Lola shrugged, working something out in that beautiful head of hers as she made the block.

“So,” she said, “Twig’s cousin owns that car lot?”

“As I understand it,” Ranucci said. “They’re not close or anything. Fact is, Twig don’t trust him. You know—”

The big guy cut him off. “Does Sam deal heroin?”

Ranucci chuckled. “Nah. He just has the poor luck to be related to an asshole like Twig. I never even saw the guy until a couple of days ago. Twig was trying to score some black tar from my dealer for resale, earn a little money to live on. Know what I mean? My dealer thought he might be a cop, so we followed him to Sam’s . . . you know, to establish his bona fides.”

Cutter raised an eyebrow. “And they trust you enough to let you come along?”

“I needed a ride to midtown,” Ranucci said. “APD put my Nissan in car jail after my last DUI. They get you every which way. Know what I mean?”

Lola slowed, swerving around one of Anchorage’s numerous car-eating potholes. “You sure Twig’s still with him?”

“I think so,” Nicky said, forehead knitting in concern that his information might not buy his freedom. “He was before I got arrested. Twig makes sure they’re attached at the hip so Sam don’t rat him out. You find one, you find the other, but you better do it quick. My dealer says Sam’s wife wants Twig gone, so he’ll be moving on any day now.”

“Tell me more about Sam,” Cutter said.

“Twig is big, but Sam’s bigger. Know what I mean?”

“You mean fat?” Lola said.

“Kind of,” Nicky said. “Sure, Sam’s got some weight on him, but he’s got the muscle to carry it around. He seems harmless enough. Twig, on the other hand, I once saw him bite the head off a guy’s pet lizard. For the sport of it. Know what I mean?”

“That’s stuffed up,” Lola said under her breath. There was a hint of Kiwi there, which made Ranucci catch his breath a little, even with the scary faces she made.

She took a painfully slow right off Arctic beside the car lot. “Looks like the shop is locked up tight,” she said. There were a half dozen cars on the lot, dusty, rained on, unkempt, like all the other cars in Anchorage at this snotty time of the year. “Maybe this place is just a front. You know, money laundering or something.”

Ranucci wolfed down the last of his sandwich.

The big deputy’s phone buzzed. He checked it, then looked out the window at the dealership. At length, he raised a handheld radio, keeping it low enough that casual passersby couldn’t see it from the street.

“Hello, Sean.”

The radio broke squelch. “Go ahead, boss.”

“That hearing in front of Judge Markham is still going strong.”

“I just saw,” the other deputy said.

Cutter spoke again. “We’re taking our guest back to the courthouse so he can catch the late jail run. You two keep an eye on this place while we’re gone.”

“Copy.”

Ranucci began to bounce in his seat, twitching at the prospect of going back into lockup. His words came out whinier than he’d intended. “Hold up, now . . . I thought we had an arrangement.”

“We do,” Cutter said. “I’ll call your probation officer and tell her you helped us as soon as we get Twig in cuffs.”

“What if you don’t?” Ranucci felt tears welling up at the prospect of spending another night in lockup. “I did my part by showing you where Sam works.”

“That you did,” Cutter said. “If things pan out, you could get out by tonight.”

“Tonight?” Nicky nodded. “Tonight would be good.”

Cutter poured him another cupful of water, which he sucked down immediately.

“But things have to pan out,” Cutter said. “Know what I mean?”

Along with a Colt Python revolver engraved with the seal of the Florida Marine Patrol, Supervisory Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter inherited his grandfather’s natural aversion to smiling. Arliss had not been able to say “grandpa” when he was a boy, and had instead called his grandfather “Grumpy.” The name so fit the elder Cutter’s personality that it stuck at once. He became “Grumpy” to everyone who knew him, friend and foe alike—and he had plenty of each. Neither Arliss nor his grandfather seemed to be in possession of the facial muscles that allowed normal people to grin without looking slightly dyspeptic. Arliss would have inherited the name as well, but his older brother, Ethan, had rightly observed that though there were two grumpy Cutters, there could only be one Grumpy Cutter.

Arliss’s grandmother died before he was born; judging from the photo albums, she was one of the few people on earth who could make Grumpy smile. Everyone who knew her described Nana Cutter as a patient Christian woman who practiced what she preached, and gently chastised her husband for being so judgmental in the way he went about his law enforcement duties. Grumpy often told stories about his bride, as he called her, when he had the boys out on his boat. Hate the sin, love the sinner was her motto. Can’t argue with the Good Book, Grumpy would say. Damnedest thing, though. I put the sin in jail, the sinner always hitches a ride.

Cutter smiled inside at the thought, but his face remained passive.

It was completely dark by the time they dropped Nicholas Ranucci at the Marshals cellblock in the James M. Fitzgerald US Courthouse and Federal Building, and returned to Honest Sam’s Honest Cars off Arctic Avenue. Cutter was in the front seat now. His partner on the Alaska Fugitive Task Force, Lola Teariki—Fontaine until her recent divorce—remained at the wheel. Her father was Maori and had grown up in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific near Tahiti and Fiji and a whole load of other places Cutter wanted to visit someday. Lola’s mother, a handsome woman of Japanese heritage, had met Mr. Teariki when she’d stopped in Rarotonga on her way to spend a gap year tramping around New Zealand. She made it no farther, instead staying in the mysteriously beautiful Cooks long enough to get Lola’s father to fall in love with her so she could lure him back to California. As it turned out, his mother was originally from Nebraska, so immigration wasn’t a problem. Lola spent nearly all of her summers growing up on her father’s island—Raro, they called it. They spoke English there, with a beautiful Kiwi accent that had, more or less, rubbed off on Lola over the years. She used phrases like “right as,” meaning right as rain or good to go, “yis” instead of yes, and referred to bad situations as “stuffed up” instead of more colorful words. Although Cutter never admitted it, the accent made him enjoy hearing Deputy Lola speak—most of the time.

Her cell phone sat on the center console. Deputy Alfredo Hernandez from the District of Nevada was on speaker. He and Lola had gone through Basic at the US Marshals Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia. Hernandez seemed particularly interested that Lola was now Teariki and not Fontaine, as he’d known her in training. Cutter sensed he might have a little crush on his former classmate. After going through the obligatory pleasantries of people who’d sweated through the rope runs and other hellish tortures the training cadre dreamed up for five long months, they got down to the business of discussing Twig Ripley.

“Okay, Smurf,” Lola said. “Tell me what you got on this guy.”

Cutter had no idea what had earned Hernandez the nickname of Smurf and resolved not to ask—though he was certain Lola would tell him anyway milliseconds after she ended the call.

“I been looking for Twig Ripley for nearly a year,” Smurf Hernandez said. “This lead of yours, you think it’s solid?”

“We’ve got some info on his cousin,” Lola said. “But our informant says your guy will be on the move anytime now.”

She rolled to a stop along the grimy curb across the street from a municipal park, half a block farther away from Honest Sam’s. Idling in front of a park didn’t draw quite as much attention as sitting at a car lot.

Cutter spoke next. “Have you dealt with Twig personally?”

“I’ve arrested him twice,” Hernandez said. “Had him in court a half dozen times or more.”

“He ever fight?” Cutter asked. “Cause you problems?”

“No and no,” Hernandez said. “He’s got crazy eyes though. Always looks like he’s a split second away from going apeshit.”

Rain spattered on the windshield, falling harder by the moment. A sudden wind buffeted the SUV, driving the downpour and making it seem as if they were in a car wash.

“How about weapons?” Lola asked.

“No again,” Hernandez said. “Like I said, he’s never fought me, or any cop as far as I know, but he’s kicked the crap outta assorted baby mamas. Las Vegas Metro is pretty sure he smashed his exwife’s hand with a hammer, but she says she shut it in a car door, so he skated on that one.”

“Sounds like a peach,” Cutter said.

“Hope you can scoop him up,” Hernandez said. “Give me a call later, Lola. Fill me in. It’ll be good to catch up.”

“Oh, we’ll get him,” Lola said. “Be safe.”

She ended the call, made certain the screen was locked so she didn’t accidentally butt dial Hernandez back, and dropped the phone in her vest pocket.

“He seems like a good guy,” Cutter said.

She laughed under her breath. “He is. Kind of goofy sometimes, but who isn’t, right?” She shook her head, remembering. Here it came. Cutter sat back to listen to the story, thankful he’d at least be able to hear it with a bit of Kiwi accent.

“So,” she said. “Hernandez bought this bright blue shirt at a Brunswick mall. Then he wore it to a party one weekend at Pam’s. You’ve been there, right?”

Cutter nodded. Pam’s was a local watering hole that catered to FLETC students. Everyone went to Pam’s at least once, if only for a class graduation party.

“Well,” Lola continued. “The dye in the stupid shirt turned his whole torso blue. Everybody had knocked a few back already and a bunch of ’em started yelling at him to strip—”

“I get the picture,” Cutter said.

Lola gave a mock shudder. “I’m sure you don’t . . . Anyway, he is a good dude. I imagine you did some wild stuff in the academy.”

Cutter just stared at her.

“Okay, boss, I get it,” she said. “No need to curse me with your eyes.”

Cutter zipped the neck of his fleece vest a little higher and then reached down to retrieve a dark blue Helly Hansen raincoat from beside his feet. Originally from Florida, he still wasn’t quite used to the chill of Alaska. Summer had been lush and green, if a little rainy for his tastes. Alaskans tended to go on and on about their long days in the summer, but Cutter wasn’t quite sold on that either. He was a man who felt guilty if he wasn’t up and doing something with the sun. Short nights wore him out. October had gotten back to a more reasonable cycle, but now the days were getting shorter fast, so that wasn’t going to last.

“I’ve been here for almost four years,” she said, “and I’m still not used to it.”

“Used to what?”

She nodded at his coat. “The cold. Seems like Alaska has two seasons. Winter and July. I love the work but I wouldn’t mind a little longer summer. I’m a warm-weather girl. My mom says I’m like a paina—one of those Cook pines.”

“How’s that?” Cutter asked, knowing Lola would tell him anyway.

“They’re not really a pine, I guess, but from some islands near Australia. Anyway, they’re all over now, even in California. In the south they bend to the north. In the north, they lean south—like they’re always looking for someplace a little warmer.” She turned toward him and grinned, showing her teeth. “Just like me.”

“I know what you mean,” Cutter said honestly. Alaska was great, but he missed the warm-water beaches of Florida. “Still, this is a beautiful place.”

“True enough.” Lola’s brow furrowed, the way it did when she was deep in thought. She pushed the sleeve of her jacket up enough to check her watch. “I can’t believe Markham held court so late.”

Cutter shrugged. He made it a point to listen to his deputies when they bitched, just in case there was a bona fide complaint, but he rarely joined in. He had to admit that Judge J. Anthony Markham was a piece of work though.

“I walked past the chief’s office this morning,” Lola said. “Scott Keen was in there talking about some kind of threat. He shut the door when I walked by. All very hush-hush. He likes to make everything double top secret.”

“Must be,” Cutter said. “Because it’s news to me.”

Being out of the loop might have bothered another supervisor, but Cutter didn’t care to know every little thing going on in the district. That was the chief’s job. There was plenty to worry about in his own wheelhouse. His own “swim-lane,” the bigwigs in DC called it. Protective investigations were all well and good, but he’d leave those to the judicial security inspector and spend his energy hunting fugitives.

“Mark my words, boss,” Lola said. “If we don’t get Twig tonight, we’ll be yanked away to work some protection detail.” She threw her head back against the seat and stared up at the headliner like she was in agony. “Let’s get this show on the road. You know we have our FIT test next week. I was supposed to run tonight.”

“I thought you ran this morning,” Cutter said. He enjoyed a good workout, but when it came to fitness, Lola Teariki was beyond maniacal.

“I did three miles,” she said. “But like you said, I am putting in for SOG this next go around. You know how hard they look at your shooting and FIT scores.”

SOG—the Special Operations Group—was the Marshals Service’s version of SWAT.

Cutter almost smiled. “You want exercise? Then let’s get some exercise.” He keyed the radio. “Lola and I are going to do one more drive-by.” He let off the mic so he was just talking to Lola. “And then we’ll go for a walk.”

“In this crap?” Lola peered across the seat in the dim glow of the dash lights. Her brows were raised, eyes wide and slightly crossed, like she was staring at the tip of her nose. Her top lip curled in the grimace of her Maori ancestors’ haka war dance.

“Hold on to that face,” Cutter said. “We may need it if this works out.”

“You mean if it doesn’t work out,” she corrected.

“Nope,” Cutter said. “I mean if it does.” He nodded down the street. “But first the drive-by. When you get in front of the car lot, I want you to punch it so you peel out.”

Lola threw the Expedition into gear. “Peel out?”

Cutter shrugged. “When I tell you, I want you to hit the gas like you’re fleeing the scene.”

Lola did as instructed, stomping on the accelerator to send up a rooster tail of gravel and sludge in front of Honest Sam’s.

Cutter pointed a half a block down with an open hand. “Pull up there and then flip a U-turn.”

The Expedition’s headlights reflected silver-black off the rain-soaked asphalt. Wipers thwacked back and forth against a backdrop of hissing rain and crunching gravel.

Cutter shrugged on the raincoat and opened his door to a gust of wind.

“I was thinking,” he said a minute later as they trudged side by side through the rain toward the lot. “You can’t do any better than a hundred percent on your FIT test.”

“Not true, boss,” Lola said. “SOG looks at times, not max points. I’m competing against other applicants, not the standard.”

Cutter thought on that. In his forties, he could still run a sub-ten mile-and-a-half, bench press his body weight fifteen times, and pump out seventy pushups without any trouble—but contemplating Lola Teariki’s workouts made his bones ache.

They paused two hundred feet from the shop, scanning for security cameras. Cutter found two—one facing outward from the front door, and another that pointed toward the lot. The side of the building next to the roll-up garage doors appeared to be a blind spot. Sean Blodgett and Anchorage PD Task Force Officer Nancy Alvarez were parked around the corner in another SUV, giving them a view of the front and side doors as well as the driveway onto the lot, but not the garage.

“Keep your hood pulled up around your face,” Cutter said to Lola. “In case we missed a camera.”

She adjusted her jacket around the thick bun of hair on top of her head. “Okay. But I’m still not sure what we’re doing.”

“Ranucci says Twig is on the move,” Cutter said. “So time is of the essence. We have a cell number for Sam, but I don’t want to burn it if we don’t h. . .