Free Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 01 - Lost Angel by Mike Doogan

the onyx stone.
    GENESIS 2:12
     
 
 
 
 
THE ALARM CLOCK’S BEEPING PULLED KANE OUT OF HIS dream. He lay for a moment getting his courage up, then threw off the blankets, rolled out of bed, and hopped around for a minute on the frigid floor. He scraped a clear patch in the frost covering the room’s small window and looked out. Too dark to see anything. He took a fast shower—you could never tell how long the hot water would last in a place like this—and dried himself on a towel as big and soft as a sheet of sandpaper. He repacked his duffel and walked along silent hallways to the café.
    Tracy the waitress was standing behind the counter of the restaurant. She was wearing the same clothes. Kane wondered if she’d found some other customer ready to part with $100.
    “This is some shift they’ve got you on,” Kane said.
    “Work’s work,” she replied. “Menu?”
    “Just coffee,” Kane said. “What’s the weather like?”
    “Cold,” Tracy said, pouring coffee into a thick, chipped mug. “Thirty or thirty-five.”
    She didn’t bother to say “below zero.” She didn’t have to.
    Tracy put the coffee down in front of him, bending low from force of habit. Up close, she had lines of weariness beside her mouth and a bright red hickey on her left breast. Guess she found her man, Kane thought.
    The coffee was hot and surprisingly good. As he drank it, Kane thought about his day. The mine first, then Rejoice, he decided.
    He got another cup of coffee to go, put his coat on, picked up his duffel, and walked out to the warm storage shed. His breath escaped in white puffs. The cold deadened the skin of his face and froze the hairs in his nose. The only noises were the hum of the electrical line and the squeaking of his boots on the snow. Not a bird flew or a creature stirred.
    Kane pulled the door open and went into the shed. He threw his duffel into the back of the pickup, backed out of the shed, got out, and closed the door, then drove off toward the bright lights that marked the Pitchfork mine.
    He cruised along the highway for a few miles, the only thing moving. The community of Devil’s Toe, not much more than a dozen buildings spread out along both sides of the road, was shut tight.
    As he drove, he tried to ready himself for seeing Charlie Simms again. Simms had led the investigation of the shooting, and the last time Kane had talked to him was in an interrogation room at the station.
    It was almost a week after the shooting. Kane was still feeling slow and fuzzy headed, disoriented from something, maybe hitting his head, maybe being the guy doing the listening rather than the talking.
    “We can’t find a gun, Nik,” Simms said that day. “I’m telling you this because you’re family. The other kid at the scene came into the station the next day. Lionel Simmons. Aka ‘Train.’ Seventeen. A pretty long juvie rap sheet. He said him and the retard, Jessup, were watching TV when they heard the shots. Jessup ran out to see what was what. Lionel followed, he says, to keep Jessup out of trouble. They were looking at the scene when you pulled up and started barking orders. He said he figured Jessup got confused, but it looked to him like the retard was starting to raise his hands when you shot him. Then you fell and hit your head on the ice. He went over to check on Jessup. No pulse. You groaned and he ran away.”
    “Why’d he run?” Kane asked.
    “Said he was afraid you’d shoot him, too,” Simms said.
    “That’s it? His word against mine?” Kane asked.
    Simms was silent for a moment.
    “We went over it with him hard, again and again, but he stuck to his story,” Simms said. “We tested the clothes he was wearing. No gunshot residue. We got a warrant and searched his house and didn’t find anything. None of the neighbors said anything about seeing a gun, including one old bag who said she watched the whole thing and saw you shoot the kid for no reason, even though she can’t see three