Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 01 - Lost Angel by Mike Doogan Page B

drive from Anchorage to Rejoice takes five or six hours. It wasn’t a good day. The snow slowed Kane to a crawl, and he had to stop well below the top of the pass to put on the tire chains, a wet, unpleasant job, then stop on the other side to take them off. There was, as usual, much less snow on the interior side of the mountains, but the air was much colder.
    Kane looked at the trees he passed and the streams he drove over, wondering what it would be like to throw a pack on his back again and head off into the wild. He’d always loved the outdoors. When he was a boy, his father had taken him fishing and hunting. Then his father abandoned the family. But Nik was soon old enough to fish and hike in the summers with his friends and, later, hunt as well. He strapped on snowshoes as soon as he could, and skis not long after. The outdoors had been an escape from the troubles at home, and during the summers anyway, the source of fish, meat, and berries, much welcomed by his mother.
    He’d done everything he could to show his own children the joys of the outdoors, with mixed success. Only his oldest daughter seemed to have caught his enthusiasm. His other daughter was an indoor girl all the way. And his youngest, his son? Kane had missed too much of his growing up to know.
    His own attitude toward the outdoors seemed to have changed in prison. After so much time in confined spaces, the land that passed by the windows of his pickup looked too big and empty. I hope I get over this, he thought. I’d hate to lose the outdoors, too.
    Kane was stiff, tired, and hungry when he pulled into the parking lot of the Devil’s Toe Lodge a little after six p.m.
    The lodge was a long, low log structure. Most of the logs were dark with age, but some were lighter, showing that someone had added on to the place. A door opened into a bar and café.
    Inside the bar, a big, bearded drunk dressed in work clothes was yelling at a small, white-haired Native man wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, a ski jacket, and one of the nicest pairs of knee-high beaded moose-hide moccasins Kane had seen in years. A half dozen men in work clothes sat at a couple of tables, watching.
    “We don’t want none of you goddamn salmon-crunchers in here,” the drunk was yelling. “Now get the hell out.”
    The old man stood with his head bowed, leaning slightly toward the man like his words were a stiff wind. The drunk towered over him. Kane’s first instinct was to ignore the situation. It wasn’t his problem. But that was prison talking. I’ve got to get out of prison sometime, he thought. He walked over and stepped between them, facing the drunk.
    “Calm down,” he said quietly, “or you’ll break something.”
    The bartender looked at the two of them and scurried from the room.
    Up close, the drunk looked to be Kane’s age or a little older. He had small, bloodshot eyes and a beak of a nose etched with the red lines of a heavy drinker. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he had an ornate tattoo on his left forearm of a demon doing unspeakable things to a woman. The finger he shook at Kane had dirt embedded under its nail.
    “Who the fuck are you?” the drunk screamed. “You keep out of this or you’ll wish you had.”
    His breath smelled like the inside of a bourbon barrel.
    He was taller than Kane and, with his ample gut, probably fifty pounds heavier. Kane wasn’t worried. Every Anchorage cop had plenty of experience with big drunks.
    “I’m just a guy came in here to have a quiet meal,” Kane said reasonably, “which I can’t do if you’re carrying on like this.”
    “Fuck you,” the drunk said, and wound up to throw a big right hand. Kane shifted his feet and kicked the drunk’s brace leg out from under him. The drunk toppled over, banging his head on a table as he went down.
    “Jumpin’ jimminy,” the old man said, “we’re having fun now.”
    Kane looked around the room. All the men were standing. He turned to face them, arms at his