Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,97

and got her own cell phone.

Lola picked up right away.

Cutter gave her a ten-second brief, then said, “Wake up the judge, Ewing, Paisley, everyone and get them out here to help.”

In addition to the village health aide, Birdie activated the emergency telephone tree. It took less than ten minutes for Melvin Red Fox to arrive on the first ATV, pulling his plywood trailer. A second headlight rounded the line of willows a half minute later as Daisy Aguthluk rode up with her twenty-year-old daughter, who happened to be the village health aide. Lola and the others followed moments later with Judge Markham. Aften and Bobby Brooks rode in behind them. The machines formed a large circle around Ned Jasper, like musk oxen protecting their young, providing enough light to get him on a backboard.

A frigid wind had pushed the fog away, filling it with snow.

“Let’s get him loaded in the trailer,” Melvin said, raising his voice just enough to be heard over the barking dogs.

“Wait,” Cutter said. “Is there oxygen at the clinic?”

Daisy’s daughter held up a bag. “I got oxygen, and an IV. Only thing at the clinic is a bed and phone to call the doc.”

Snow was coming down fast now—big, popcorn-size flakes, driven at an angle by the arriving storm. The temperature had fallen over ten degrees in the last few minutes.

“We have a bed here.” Cutter pointed toward the cabin. “Let’s get him warm and stable before we move him that far.”

“He’s right,” Birdie said. “Here is better.”

Cutter shot a glance at Lola. “Jolene’s not with you?”

“I sent her to pick something up,” Birdie said.

Four men, including Judge Markham, grabbed the backboard and lifted together. Jasper gritted his teeth as they shuffled him quickly into the house. Cutter went ahead, putting a boot to the locked door. It was heavy timber, but there wasn’t much to the lock and it gave way with a single kick. He stepped inside to clear a path, pulling the single bed away from the wall so the men could walk up both sides and more easily lower the heavy backboard without too much discomfort to Jasper.

Lola posted outside the door, keeping an eye on the trail. If Donna Taylor had any sense at all, she had to know she’d burned her return the moment she shot Jasper. But Cutter knew all too well that people did strange things under pressure. Birdie remained outside as well, presumably calling to check on her daughter.

Judge Markham stoked the stove while Aften Brooks turned on all the lights. Daisy Aguthluk’s daughter got an IV started in Jasper and was already on the phone with the doctor in Bethel. Cutter did a cursory search of the cabin. The one-room cabin was roughly sixteen feet square, with a plywood counter in the back corner serving as a kitchen. There was running water in the sink, and electricity. The toilet was through a door that led to a small addition off the same corner. It was cluttered but clean, decorated like a sporting goods store during inventory. Bamboo fishing rods hung on pegs in the log wall above a workbench with a fly-tying vise. Pallets of dry dog food, partially covered with a striped Pendleton wool blanket, took up much of the south wall. A couple of rifles leaned against the one corner. A Remington 870 pump shotgun hung over the door. Insulated bib overalls, too big to belong to Donna Taylor, were draped across a rack beside the stove. A mound of multicolored fleece dog booties sat on a plastic storage tote in the corner next to an unopened bulk bag of wool socks from Costco. Several harnesses in varying states of repair lay stacked on the floor along with several neatly coiled ropes and cables that Cutter assumed to be lines for a sled. The whole place smelled faintly of wood smoke and wet dog, which Cutter found oddly comforting despite the circumstances.

There was little inside the cabin that said Donna Taylor had ever even been there. She’d apparently been living out of a suitcase and a Rubbermaid storage tote. The lid was off the tote, with some underwear and a digital camera set on the floor as if she’d been looking for something.

The judge stood beside Cutter, watching him search. “You don’t expect she’ll come back for any of this, do you?”

“No, sir,” Cutter said, thumbing through a notebook that was by the bed, hoping to find contact numbers, addresses, anything to help him