Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 01 - Lost Angel Page 2

  “Elder Pinchon’s boy got the moose last fall,” Thomas Wright explained. “He’s our best hunter and a fine shot. We grow the potatoes and carrots ourselves. The bread is homemade, and the butter was churned from the milk from our own herd.”

  “Rejoice is very self-sufficient,” Moses Wright growled, “and very prideful, too, it seems. ‘Woe to the crown of pride,’ it is written in Isaiah, and we all would do well to remember that.”

  Thomas Wright turned his attention to eating. Other elders hurried to fill the silence.

  During the meal, they told Kane that Rejoice had about 230 residents, with another thirty or so away at the moment. The community—nobody used the word “commune”—had been founded in 1967 by Moses Wright, his wife, and a couple dozen others. Over the years, some people had died or drifted away, but more had joined. Children were born, and when they became adults, most stayed.

  “You were born here?” Kane asked Thomas Wright.

  “I was,” Wright said. There was a tone in his voice Kane couldn’t quite place. Not pride. More like resignation.

  “Does everyone who comes here stay?” Kane asked.

  The Wrights passed a look.

  “This life is not for everyone,” Moses Wright said. “Those of us who live here must sacrifice in the service of God.”

  The girls returned to clear away the bowls, then served dessert: blueberry pie à la mode.

  “Let me guess,” Kane said. “Blueberries from your own bushes. Homemade ice cream.”

  All the elders smiled. Except Moses Wright.

  “Do you mock us, Mr. Kane?” he thundered.

  “Why, no, Elder Moses Wright,” Kane said. “You have much to be proud of.”

  “This is not our doing, but God’s,” the old man said, intoning:

  “For the Lord thy God bringeth thee in to a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;

  “A land of wheat and barley and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;

  “A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it.”

  “That’s not exactly the description I’d give of this place,” Kane said, “but the rest of it seems to fit: ‘A land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.’ ”

  Silence greeted Kane’s words.

  “Are you a religious man, then, Mr. Kane?” asked the elder called Pinchon. He was, like Thomas Wright, in his thirties, but the resemblance ended there. Pinchon was one of the few men Kane had ever met who could fairly be called beautiful. He had fine, even features, dark hair and eyes, and eyelashes a supermodel would kill for. He had been introduced as the community’s bookkeeper.

  “I’ve had a lot of time to read in the past few years,” Kane said.

  “ ‘The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,’ ” Moses Wright said.

  “Shakespeare, too, I expect,” Kane said, straining to keep his voice light.

  The old man scowled. The other elders fought with varying degrees of success not to smile. The girls came in and cleared away the rest of the plates.

  “Now, I suppose we had better get to the business that brings you here,” Thomas Wright said briskly. His tone made it clear that a meeting had begun and he was in charge of it. “Perhaps, Mr. Kane, you wouldn’t mind telling us a little of your qualifications.”

  Kane looked around the table.

  “My name is Nik Kane,” he said. “Except for some time in college and the Army, I’ve lived in Alaska my whole life. I am fifty-five and have been married for twenty-four years. We have three children, the last of them still in college. I put in twenty-five years on the Anchorage police force, fifteen of them as a detective. I’m here with the recommendation of the chief there, Tom Jeffords.”

  Moses Wright opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it with the something unsaid.

  “Why did you leave the force?” a thin, gray-haired elder asked.

  “Surely you know that,” Kane said, looking around the table, meeting the eyes of each man in turn. “The story was in all the newspapers.”

  A silence descended, broken by Moses Wright.

  “Is this really the sort of man we want to invite into our community?” he asked. “A drunkard and a murderer?”

  His son opened his mouth to speak, but Kane raised a hand to stop him. “Actually, the charge was manslaughter,” Kane said, “and in the end I was exonerated. I haven’t had a drink in more than eight years.”

  “Still . . .” the old man began.

  “I’m not finished,” Kane said quietly. “I’m here as a favor to a friend, not to solicit either your employment or your approval. If my presence here offends you, just say the word and I’ll go back to Anchorage.”

  “Your presence here offends not only me, but God,” the old man barked.

  “Father!” Thomas Wright said.

  Kane got to his feet.

  “Thank you for a delicious lunch,” he said to Thomas Wright. “I guess I’ll be getting back now.”

  “Please, Mr. Kane,” the younger man said, putting a hand on Kane’s arm, “don’t leave.”

  Something in the man’s voice made Kane sink down into his chair again.

  “As for you, father,” Thomas Kane said, “we have discussed this and discussed it. You know the majority of the council does not feel as you do. Stop being obstructionist.”

  The old man bared his teeth at his son, then opened his mouth to speak.

  “If all of your experience is in the city,” a balding, pop-eyed fellow said quickly, “do you think you can work out here?

  “Detecting is detecting,” Kane said. “And I know my way around the woods.”

  Silence descended. It was clear the group had at least one more question, but no one wanted to ask it. Finally, a young man said, “There’s sort of a rough element out here. You may run into them in your work.”

  Kane smiled and ran a hand over his close-cropped hair.

  “I have a lot of experience with the rough element,” he said, “both as a police officer and more recently. I’ll be okay.”

  “How many men have you killed?” Moses Wright asked.

  “Do you want me to count the war?” Kane asked.

  “Is that where you got the scar?” the old man said with a vicious grin. “The war? Or is it perhaps punishment for more recent sins?”

  “That’s enough, Father,” Thomas Wright said. “Mr. Kane didn’t come here to be put on trial.”

  “The Lord said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ” Moses Wright growled.

  Kane looked at the old man for a long moment.

  “Your Lord sets a high standard,” he said. “Are you so holy that you always meet it?”

  That brought silence. Thomas Wright looked around the table and got nods from everyone but his father.

  “Now, perhaps, Mr. Kane, you’d like to hear what it is we’d like you to do,” he said.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Kane said.

  Wright cleared his throat and began.

  “As my father said, not everyone is cut out for this life,” he said. “This is a community in every sense of the word. We live together and worship together and laugh together and weep together. We raise our children together. We own everything you see together.

  “That togetherness is too much for some people. So is the religion that binds us. So is the lack of amenities: no movies, no television, no coffee stands. No coffee, for that matter.”

  “We allow no stimulants,” the old man said.

  “Coffee is expensive,” his son said, “and we can’t grow it ourselves. At any rate, we lose a few people every year. We have our own school, but there comes a time when many of our children go off to college or the military.”

  “You send people to the military?” Kane asked.

  “We are not pacifists, Mr. Kane,” the old man said.

  “Nor are we trying t
o cut ourselves off completely from the larger world,” said his son. “At least not all of us are. And because we cannot raise or make everything we need, we have to have money. So we own some businesses, both along the highway in Devil’s Toe and in Anchorage and Fairbanks. Mostly tourism related. Our own people run those businesses.

  “As you can see, a significant portion of our young-adult and adult population is exposed to the larger world. A few succumb to its charms.”

  “We wouldn’t lose any if we kept them at home and prayed harder,” the old man said.

  His son ignored him.

  “I’m telling you this so that you understand that we don’t panic when someone leaves. We don’t like to lose anyone. The community is diminished by their departure. But we understand that humans have different needs and the free will to seek to fulfill them.”

  “Get to the point,” the old man barked.

  “Having said all that,” his son said, “we would like to hire you to find a member of our community.”

  “They would like to hire you,” the old man said.

  “Elder Moses Wright,” his son said mildly, “we have discussed this and thought about it and prayed about it. This is what we agreed to do.”

  None of the other elders said anything, but Kane understood that they were sitting at the table, when they no doubt had plenty to do elsewhere, to demonstrate that the community agreed with Thomas Wright and not his father.

  “Who would you like found?” he asked.

  “My daughter,” Thomas Wright said. “Faith.”

  “By your leave, Elder Thomas Wright,” Pinchon said, “the others and I have affairs to attend to. I will assert that this is the man to do the job, and in the absence of any new disagreement”—he shot a glance at Moses Wright—“we will leave it to you to explain the task to him and negotiate his payment.”

  With that, the other men put on their outdoor clothing and departed, leaving Kane and the two Wrights.

  “This is unwise,” the old man said. “Rejoice has always handled its own problems.”

  “Father,” the younger man said, “you can be a help or a hindrance. Either way, we are decided to do this.”

  Now that the other men were gone, the differences between the two remaining were even clearer. And there was something about the younger man that Kane couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something about the way he talked or sat or held his head seemed familiar.

  “I have counseled against bringing in an outsider,” the old man said, “particularly this outsider. I will continue to speak against it.”

  “In that case, Mr. Kane,” Thomas Wright said, “perhaps we should continue our discussion elsewhere. So that my father may return to his prayer and meditation.”

  The two men put on their outdoor gear and retraced their route to the Suburban.

  “There’s something I wanted to show you anyway,” Wright said. He started the Suburban, pulled away from the building, and aimed for the foothills. As he drove, he talked.

  “Faith is almost eighteen. She has been gone four days now, since Friday,” he said. “We don’t know where she has gone or with whom. Some think she has chosen the world over Rejoice. Others are afraid harm has come to her.”

  “What do you think?” Kane asked.

  “I don’t know what to think. Since she became a teenager, Faith has become a difficult person to fathom. She does what is expected of her and seems committed to our beliefs. But last year she insisted on attending the regional high school. She said it was because they offered programs she was interested in, but I can’t help thinking she wanted time away from Rejoice.

  “The truth is, I’m afraid I don’t know my daughter very well.”

  “Might her mother be able to shed some light?” Kane asked.

  Wright was silent for a moment.

  “Her mother was called to God four years ago,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Kane said. “How about friends?”

  “I don’t think Faith confided in anyone. I of course asked the young people if they knew anything about her—I’m not certain what to call it. Departure? Disappearance?—but got no information from them. I wasn’t really sure what I should have been listening for, anyway.

  “I’m not much of a detective, I’m afraid. And the local trooper says Faith is just another runaway. He couldn’t be less interested. So we sent for you.”

  The two men drove the rest of the distance in silence. Wright pulled up next to a big greenhouse in an even bigger clearing and shut off the engine.

  “I’m not sure how much good I can do you,” Kane said as he followed Wright into the greenhouse. “Faith is nearly an adult. She’s been gone long enough for the trail to be cold. There seem to be no clues. I don’t know the area or the people. And my past . . .”

  He had more to say, but the sight that greeted him in the greenhouse took his voice away. The two men stood in a vast flower garden, an explosion of color and fragrance and moisture. The flowers were sprawled in beds, and in pots that overflowed the crude tables on which they sat. After the monotony of the winter landscape, the flowers made Kane want to sing and, at the same time, stunned him into silence. He wasn’t sure how much time went by before Wright spoke again.

  “My father doesn’t approve of this place,” he said. “Most of our greenhouses are for vegetables, and a few fruits that we try to coax into growing. He thinks this place impractical and, somehow, ungodly. But man does not live by bread alone, or even by the word of the Lord. The people here need beauty in their lives, and some evidence during the long winter that nature is not all hostility and bleakness. This place provides these things. I love it here. So did Faith.”

  He paused and turned to face Kane. He had tears in his eyes.

  “I don’t want to force Faith to come back, Mr. Kane,” he said. “I just want to stand here with her one more time.”

  2

  Thus sayeth the Lord: Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and

  deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor.

  JEREMIAH 22:3

  “SO WHAT COULD I DO?” KANE SAID, SITTING UP STRAIGHT in the hard wooden chair that faced Tom Jeffords’s desk. Jeffords didn’t want anyone but himself to be comfortable in his office. “I told him I’d try to find the girl.”

  Jeffords sat behind the cherry wood desk in a padded leather chair that, with the addition of just a few jewels, would have been a throne. He was flanked by the red, white, and blue of the U.S. flag, the blue and gold of the Alaska flag, and the white-field-with-blue-anchor of Anchorage’s city flag.

  The wall between the flags was covered with certificates and plaques, each and every one of them awarded to Thomas Jeffords. Stretching out from the flags to the far walls were clusters of photographs of Jeffords with various dignitaries: Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, two George Bushes, John Denver, B. B. King, Martha Stewart, Ted Nugent (the Motor City Madman), several prosperous-looking Asians. If you were wealthy or famous and visited Anchorage, it was hard to avoid having your picture taken with Tom Jeffords.

  Jeffords drummed on his blotter with a letter opener.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “They need the help, and you need a new start.”

  It must be nice to sit on a throne and issue decrees, Kane thought.

  “Look,” he said, “I just spent four hours bouncing around the sky in a bush plane with a kid barely old enough to drive, and another with a bunch of Bible thumpers, all as a favor to you. So if you’re looking for me to start gushing gratitude, don’t.”

  “Angels,” Jeffords said, trying to balance the letter opener on its point.

  “What?” Kane asked.

  “Angels,” Jeffords said. He moved his hands slowly away from the opener. It started to fall. He grabbed it again. “Their neighbors call them Angels. It’s not meant as a compliment.”

  “Why do you know so much about Rejoice?” Kane asked.

  Jeffords was silent. He moved his
hands again. The opener tilted to the side. He let it fall.

  “Let’s just say I have an investment in the area,” he said.

  Kane could believe that. Jeffords’s title was chief of police, but he really ran Anchorage. Doing so had made him a rich man. Not from bribes and corruption. Jeffords was too smart for that. But for more than a dozen years he’d been on the inside of every good business deal in the city and many outside it. He could have any sort of investment in the area around Rejoice.

  Kane didn’t bother to ask what the investment was. He knew from experience that Jeffords would tell him what he wanted him to know and nothing more.

  “What are they doing out there, anyway? The Angels?” Kane said.

  Jeffords spun the letter opener and watched it wheel around until it stopped, business end pointed at Kane.

  “I’m sure they could give you a better account than I,” Jeffords said.

  He gave the letter opener another spin.

  “Seems like a hard place for a religious community,” Kane said. “There’s got to be more welcoming locations.”

  Once again the opener pointed at Kane.

  “What’s the point of having faith,” Jeffords said, his words tinged with what might have been sarcasm, “if you don’t test it?”

  He spun the letter opener once more and both men watched it revolve until it stopped, pointing at Kane.

  “Are you a religious man now, Nik?” Jeffords asked. “Do you believe in God?”

  “What difference does that make?” Kane said, hearing the irritation in his voice. “Jesus, Tom, you’ve known me for more than thirty years. What are you asking me a question like that for?”

  “Rejoice’s preacher is said to be an eloquent and convincing man,” the chief said. “It wouldn’t pay to be too credulous. On the other hand, the Angels have created a religious culture out there. It would help to be able to speak their language.”

  “I’ll get by,” Kane said, wondering what Jeffords really meant by the question. Was the chief developing religious scruples as he aged? Or was he afraid that during his years in prison Kane, like so many other cons, had found Jesus?