Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,56
along with several others, came outside and helped her. It was common knowledge throughout the village that Cecilia had epilepsy. Everyone here made sure she was safe, and took care not to embarrass her after she had a seizure. The nurse went on her way and everyone thought that was the end of it.”
Markham closed his eyes and began to shake his head, obviously remembering something.
“It took about a month,” Birdie said, “but eventually, a plane landed at the old airstrip. Two strangers in suits, gussuks—white men—got off the plane. Nobody ever wore suits in the village, so this stood out as an omen. Something bad was about to happen. Older folks still didn’t speak much English in the eighties, but these men said they were deputy marshals, and they’d come for Cecilia. She wasn’t hiding, just down by the river singing and cutting fish with her teenage niece, Daisy. She was scared, so she fought—and who wouldn’t when they are being kidnapped. Anyway, the men in suits put her in handcuffs and took her away. They had a piece of paper, a document from the court, saying it was all completely legal. Cecilia Aguthluk needed to be arrested for her own safety. There was an affidavit attached to the court document, signed by an itinerant nurse named Diane Patrick, and a petition signed by Assistant Alaska Attorney General J. Anthony Markham.”
“Dear Lord in Heaven,” Markham gasped, slack jawed. “I would want to kill me.”
“What happened to Cecilia?” Lola asked.
Birdie shrugged. “We think she went to a hospital in Oregon, then fell off the radar. Some official there told Daisy that she was transferred somewhere near Spokane, but the people in Washington had never heard of her. Somebody thought she might have contracted TB and been sent to a facility in Arizona for the drier climate. She’d be around seventy now. If she’s not dead, then she’s lost in the system.”
“Due respect, Judge,” Lola said, “but you were an assistant attorney general thirty-four years ago?”
“It sounds lofty,” Markham said, still stunned. “But assistant AG is an entry-level position in Alaska. I’d just moved up from New York with a new law degree.”
“That’s what I don’t get,” Lola said. “If the writ came from the state system, why did the marshals pick her up?”
Birdie nudged the tiller slightly, steering around a raft of jagged ice twice the size of her boat. “Why are you doing a homicide investigation for the Troopers just now? This is the bush. You guys work together all the time.”
“Yeah,” Lola said. “But I can’t see the Marshals Service flying in and kidnapping innocent people without letting their family know where we’re taking them.”
“Makes me sick,” Cutter said, “but I’ve heard of this sort of thing before on Indian reservations in the Southwest.”
“Exactly,” Ned Jasper said. “You may already know this, but even today, a lot of our elders still refer to troopers and deputy marshals as tegusta.”
“Tegusta,” Cutter repeated. “What’s that?”
Birdie stared into the fog. “The one who takes people away.”
CHAPTER 18
It took an hour and a half to make the eight miles to Chaga Lodge, fighting ice flow and current the entire way. Judge Markham sat locked in his own thoughts, uncharacteristically silent.
Birdie arced her boat through the fog toward a clump of scraggly willows that looked no different from all the others they’d seen since leaving Stone Cross.
“We got maybe two hours here,” she warned. “I don’t want to run this river in the dark.”
“Understood,” Jasper said, glancing at the shadows. “One of us may have to stay here until the Troopers arrive.”
“Long as it’s not me,” Birdie said.
A slender Native man with sparse black whiskers on hollow cheeks was waiting on the bank as the bow bumped frozen mud below a small cluster of whitewashed outbuildings. The man didn’t look long out of high school. A large log structure, presumably the main lodge, loomed up the hill, barely visible behind him.
The man introduced himself as Vitus Paul. He rocked back and forth from one foot to the other, looking like he was about to jump out of his skin as he helped secure the skiff to a concrete block that looked set up for that purpose. Birdie eyed him as if she didn’t like the way he smelled. Cutter noticed a small dab of peanut butter on his chin.
“How long have you been here?” Cutter asked him.
Vitus looked up at the sky—such as it was in the fog—then gave a noncommittal shrug. “Since