Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 01 - Lost Angel by Mike Doogan Page A
Authors: Mike Doogan
Tags: Mystery
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coming up. Kane centered his weapon on the figure’s chest and fired three times. The bullets threw the figure back against the door. Then Enfield Jessup, described later in the newspapers as “a twelve-year-old mentally challenged African-American youth who was big for his age,” fell on his face, dead.
“Oh, Christ, you shot Enfield!” the other figure screamed. “Why’d you wanta do that?”
“Get your hands up!” Kane shouted. The figure raised its hands. Kane moved out from behind the door, slipped on the ice, and went down, hitting his head. He must have been knocked out for a moment, he decided later, because the next thing he knew he was getting to his feet. He put a hand to the back of his head and it came away sticky with blood.
He could hear the sirens of other police vehicles approaching, but otherwise the only sound was his own labored breathing. A few faces peeked from behind curtains to see what had caused the gunshots. Even in the bad light, Kane could see both bodies lying as before. But of the other figure, there wasn’t a trace.
Kane walked to the bodies. The officer was still breathing, but Enfield Jessup was not. There was no gun in his hand or anywhere else in sight. As a police car came sliding to a halt behind him, he sank to his knees thinking, What have I done? Where’s the gun? What have I done?
Kane shook himself all over, got to his feet, and left the church. The snow was still coming down. The city was trying to go about its business, but the roads were littered with vehicles stuck in the snow. Beater cars, mostly, but he also saw an abandoned UPS van and a city bus that had gotten high-centered.
I hope this isn’t God’s way of telling me to stay put, he thought.
Traveling through an Alaska winter could be an adventure, and Kane was prepared. He wore long underwear, jeans, a blue work shirt, a pile vest, and old hiking boots over two pairs of polypropylene socks, one thick and one thin. He had a set of tire chains in the back of the pickup along with a shovel and a tow rope. An old parachute bag held camping gear, and his duffel of clothes sat on a foam pad and sleeping bag, his Kevlar vest lying beside it.
The cab contained cold-weather gear, hot coffee, snacks, and CDs. A set of United States Geological Survey maps of the area around Rejoice lay on the passenger’s seat, along with Montaigne’s essays and a copy of the Bible. He popped a Dylan CD into the player, and Bob started grating out “Love Sick.”
About 350 road miles separate Anchorage from Rejoice. The highway follows the Matanuska Valley, climbs through a pass between the Talkeetna and Chugach mountain ranges, parallels the Copper River, then swings north and east along the Jordan to join the Alaska Highway.
Even in the snowstorm, there was a fair amount of traffic on the road between Anchorage and the Valley. The town of Palmer, about forty miles northeast of Anchorage, had started as the center of a social and economic experiment during the Great Depression, when families from the Midwest were relocated to establish agriculture in Alaska. But the coming of the container ship, the jet airplane, and the chain store made milk and vegetables from the West Coast cheaper than milk and vegetables from the Valley. Most of the people who lived in and around Palmer worked in Anchorage now, commuting because they liked the rural lifestyle and cheaper housing.
From Palmer on, only an occasional laboring semi marred the open road. On the long climb through the mountains, Kane watched the trees grow smaller and sparser, the houses fewer and farther between. He thought about why people came to Alaska and why they stayed. The Alaska they came to now was more like the rest of America than the one he’d been born in: more developed, more strident, and more polarized. But it retained its allure for people, at least certain kinds of people. Still the land of new beginnings and last chances, he thought.
On a good day, the
“Oh, Christ, you shot Enfield!” the other figure screamed. “Why’d you wanta do that?”
“Get your hands up!” Kane shouted. The figure raised its hands. Kane moved out from behind the door, slipped on the ice, and went down, hitting his head. He must have been knocked out for a moment, he decided later, because the next thing he knew he was getting to his feet. He put a hand to the back of his head and it came away sticky with blood.
He could hear the sirens of other police vehicles approaching, but otherwise the only sound was his own labored breathing. A few faces peeked from behind curtains to see what had caused the gunshots. Even in the bad light, Kane could see both bodies lying as before. But of the other figure, there wasn’t a trace.
Kane walked to the bodies. The officer was still breathing, but Enfield Jessup was not. There was no gun in his hand or anywhere else in sight. As a police car came sliding to a halt behind him, he sank to his knees thinking, What have I done? Where’s the gun? What have I done?
Kane shook himself all over, got to his feet, and left the church. The snow was still coming down. The city was trying to go about its business, but the roads were littered with vehicles stuck in the snow. Beater cars, mostly, but he also saw an abandoned UPS van and a city bus that had gotten high-centered.
I hope this isn’t God’s way of telling me to stay put, he thought.
Traveling through an Alaska winter could be an adventure, and Kane was prepared. He wore long underwear, jeans, a blue work shirt, a pile vest, and old hiking boots over two pairs of polypropylene socks, one thick and one thin. He had a set of tire chains in the back of the pickup along with a shovel and a tow rope. An old parachute bag held camping gear, and his duffel of clothes sat on a foam pad and sleeping bag, his Kevlar vest lying beside it.
The cab contained cold-weather gear, hot coffee, snacks, and CDs. A set of United States Geological Survey maps of the area around Rejoice lay on the passenger’s seat, along with Montaigne’s essays and a copy of the Bible. He popped a Dylan CD into the player, and Bob started grating out “Love Sick.”
About 350 road miles separate Anchorage from Rejoice. The highway follows the Matanuska Valley, climbs through a pass between the Talkeetna and Chugach mountain ranges, parallels the Copper River, then swings north and east along the Jordan to join the Alaska Highway.
Even in the snowstorm, there was a fair amount of traffic on the road between Anchorage and the Valley. The town of Palmer, about forty miles northeast of Anchorage, had started as the center of a social and economic experiment during the Great Depression, when families from the Midwest were relocated to establish agriculture in Alaska. But the coming of the container ship, the jet airplane, and the chain store made milk and vegetables from the West Coast cheaper than milk and vegetables from the Valley. Most of the people who lived in and around Palmer worked in Anchorage now, commuting because they liked the rural lifestyle and cheaper housing.
From Palmer on, only an occasional laboring semi marred the open road. On the long climb through the mountains, Kane watched the trees grow smaller and sparser, the houses fewer and farther between. He thought about why people came to Alaska and why they stayed. The Alaska they came to now was more like the rest of America than the one he’d been born in: more developed, more strident, and more polarized. But it retained its allure for people, at least certain kinds of people. Still the land of new beginnings and last chances, he thought.
On a good day, the
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