freaking town in jail, I would. Just to prove I wasn’t going down without a fight.
Yet somehow I just couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe what I’d witnessed had been… real? I mean, I’d seen with my own eyes a naked and autopsied man walk up the damn stairs holding a bowl of his own organs, his chest cavity swinging open like storm shutters in the wind. His face had only been rudimentarily pulled down. And Dr. Moody’s expression—he’d been shocked and more so, afraid. His reaction would have been near impossible to fake.
And the blood. So much blood.
What of the tracks in the snow? The ones that had just vanished. Where had they gone? And where had the wolf tracks come from? And then Alexander Johnson just happened to show up, wearing nothing more than a light jacket and jeans? Not to mention that I’d seen him before? As soon as I’d touched John Doe?
No, you forced that bit of info away, remember? I reminded myself.
I paused, shaking my head, as my thoughts returned to the idea that maybe the body had been planted in the ice from the get-go. I remembered the point at which Miguel and I had found John Doe in the woods. Maybe Miguel and his friends had planted it? Left it there to make the new chief of police look like a fool. Well, congrats, boys, because your little ruse was working like a charm.
No, I thought. No cop would deface a corpse just for the sake of a joke.
I just couldn’t believe that. And especially not Miguel. Even though I didn’t know him well, his serene silence and overall pensive manner didn’t lend themselves to a hoax of any sort, let alone one of this magnitude.
I was convinced this Alexander Johnson was involved in some way, shape or form. The problem was I didn’t know enough about him to figure out the how’s and why’s. “What do you do?” I demanded.
“What do I do about what?”
“For income? Otherwise known as a job, asshole.”
He chuckled. “I’m a bounty hunter.”
“You’re a what?” I repeated, frowning at him.
“A bounty hunter,” he repeated. “As in, I hunt down bad guys and bring them to you, the good guys.”
“Why haven’t I ever heard of you, then?”
He shrugged. “Well, you haven’t been here very long have you?”
He had a point. It had only been a few months. “No, I haven’t.”
“Right and I haven’t had a job for a while. I’ve been focused on other things.”
“Okay, so where is your identification? You must carry a license on you?” I asked.
“Of course,” he answered. “It’s in my back pocket.”
I started fishing around for it and pulled out his wallet as I rifled through his various cards, I found the license and his identification which confirmed his story.
“Miguel can vouch for me, as well,” he continued. I work as a bridge between you, the police, and the reservations all around Alaska. I’ve had to bring in a few guys and hand them over to Miguel.”
“I worked in Anchorage for many years, so why haven’t I heard or seen you before?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “I’m currently coming out of hiatus.”
“Next question, where do you live?”
“Are you planning on showing up at my house?” he asked with a huge grin that did nothing but further piss me off.
“No, now, answer the question.”
“Well, my home away from home is just outside of town. I have a place up in Cooker’s Knoll. You know it?”
I did know it. It was a rural community up in the hills, maybe fifteen minutes from Hope. It was a small settlement of houses with people who mostly wanted to keep to themselves. “I know where Cooker’s Knoll is, but you said it was your home away from home?”
He nodded. “Home is on the reservation, where I grew up.”
“Which one?”
“Ammagaruqnik.” It just happened to be the farthest away of all the Inuit reservations. “Satisfied?” he asked.
“No,” I answered and it was the truth. I was anything but satisfied. With the events that had gone on in the last couple of days and the fact that I still had no answers, I was less than satisfied. In fact, I was confused and in a state of general irritation.
“It doesn’t make sense, does it?” Alexander asked as he shook his head.
“What doesn’t make sense?”
“The past three days…”
I swung him around hard enough that we both nearly lost our footing, the snow and ice underfoot slippery as all hell. I held onto him as