Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,48

Troopers can get here or I transport him out.“

“I’ll be out before that, genius,” Stepanov said, staring daggers at Cutter. “My mom’s on the village council and the nonprofit board. She has dinner with your colonel every time she goes to Anchorage. Soon as she tells him how you beat my ass, he’ll have you hauled before a judge for police brutality.”

“Doubtful,” Cutter said quietly, fighting the urge to point out that if he beat someone’s ass, they wouldn’t have the ability to gripe about it for days.

“Come on,” Stepanov said, going from belligerent to weepy drunk in a mercurial change of tactics. “Please. Can’t you just let me go? I help you guys sometimes with my boat.”

Cutter led him by the elbow toward Jasper’s ATV. “Where do you want him?”

“Mind riding in the trailer with him?” Jasper asked. “The VPSO office is just up the road.”

Stepanov wailed, pulling against Cutter’s grip. “Somebody please call my mom. She’ll straighten this out. It was all a big misunderstanding. Ask Doreen. We were just screwing around and she fell out the window. If she’s hurt, that’s what caused it.”

“Hmmm,” Cutter said. “We were right here. Saw the whole thing.”

“She fell,” Stepanov said, wide-eyed and shaking his head as if it was all so clear.

Cutter’s voice grew more sinister. “How about you remain silent.”

“Seriously, Trooper,” Stepanov said, pleading now. “Come on, buddy. I’m telling you. I make some mistakes when I’m drinking, but you know me. We’ll be laughing all this off by tomorrow. This is all a big misunder—”

“I’m not a trooper,” Cutter said, reaching the back of the trailer. He pulled Stepanov close, looking down so they were eye to eye. “US Marshals, and I could not give a pinch of shit about who your mother knows. I am not your friend. I am not your buddy. Fact is, you see me anywhere besides the courtroom and you should do yourself a favor and keep walking.”

Cutter set him down on a patch of bare plywood in the trailer, his back against a wall.

Stepanov shivered. “Can I get a blanket?”

“Fresh out of blankets,” Cutter said.

“That was badass,” Ned Jasper whispered before Cutter climbed into the trailer with the prisoner. “But I should probably let you know, his mother really does know the colonel.”

“So do I,” Cutter said. “And I happen to know he hates domestic violence. Anyway, that wouldn’t matter.”

Jasper sighed. “We usually have to play things a little calmer out here. Sort of a going-along-to-get-along type deal.”

Cutter cocked his head, raising a brow. “You wouldn’t have arrested him?”

“Oh yeah,” Ned said. “I would have arrested him. But I woulda had to be nicer about it. You never know if Stepanov might be the guy to come by in his boat when you’re stuck on a sandbar.”

Cutter scoffed. “This guy beat the hell out of a girl half his size. I’d rather spend the night on a sandbar than pull my punches with somebody like him.”

Ned Jasper thought about that a moment, then shrugged, his broad face cracking a smile of approval. “Like I said, badass.”

CHAPTER 16

Ned Jasper used his cell phone to call someone on his list to watch the prisoner while they were en route to the office. The jail guard must not have had far to walk, because he was waiting when they pulled up. He was young, maybe eighteen, and wore a hoodie with the Stone Cross Timber wolves basketball logo on the front. Jasper introduced Cutter as the visiting marshal. The kid nodded like he knew already and shook Cutter’s hand.

“Fog’s rolling in fast,” the kid said to Jasper. “Might have to do a telephonic hearing if you can’t get him to Bethel.”

“Maybe so,” the VPSO said. He looked up at Cutter. “Think your judge would want to do an arraignment?”

Cutter started to answer but Jasper cut him off.

“I joke. We’ll get you settled and I’ll call the court in Bethel. They’ll probably let him out though . . .”

Booking someone wearing nothing but tighty whities didn’t take long and they had Archie Stepanov locked up in less than five minutes. Ned Jasper was right. The holding cell wasn’t much, just six eight-foot by eight-foot sections of dog kennel that formed a chain-link cube. A blue rubberized wrestling mat functioned as a floor and mattress while a five-gallon plastic bucket in the corner provided a latrine. Considering that many of the homes in Stone Cross still used the honey-bucket system, the arrangement couldn’t really be viewed as