Deadfall (18 page)

“No. That’s where the arch holds it away from the ground.”

“Exactly. The only way I could get the third one was to have a much smaller person wear the boot, so the ball of their foot was positioned in the middle. But, being much smaller, the foot tended to slide around in the boot if they walked, making prints with inconsistent pressure.

“To make the fourth—the one that worked—I had a person with a foot too big for the boot put it on, but it would only go on partway, so they were walking almost on their toes—at least on the ball of the foot. The heel of the foot would not touch the bottom of the boot at all; only the heel and toe of the boot itself were making a print as they came in contact with the ground, but the ball of the person’s extended foot put pressure in the middle of the print, creating that odd, deeper spot.”

Jensen nodded slowly, still intent on examining the results of the experiment.

“Good work, John,” he said finally. “The way your mind works is amazing. But what does it mean?”

Caswell cleared his throat and frowned as he reluctantly gave Alex one possible, if unwelcome, answer to his question.

“You were wondering if there could be more than one person involved. If there is, one of them has feet bigger than the boots that made that print.”

C
aswell followed Jensen from the lab and paused as Alex stopped in the parking lot, thinking hard.

“You know, that cement dust on the traps could fit right in with Moule’s construction job. I’d like to know exactly where he’s working and if it has anything to do with concrete.”

“Good thought. Should we take a run to the address McIntire gave us?”

“I think it’s more than in order. I want to see that construction site, talk to the foreman, and get a look at Moule.”

T
he construction site in south Anchorage was loaded with cement. It seemed to Alex that the condominium that was nearing completion a few blocks from the shopping district at the intersection of Dimond Boulevard and the Old Seward Highway was being built of nothing but concrete. He was already
collecting a few samples for Timmons when a heavyset man in a yellow hard hat walked out of a portable office and across the yard to investigate the presence of the two strangers poking around his site.

“Help you with something?” he asked, tucking the thumbs of his beefy hands into his belt, a frown of curiosity and confrontation beetling his heavy brows.

Jensen presented identification, introduced himself and Caswell, and learned in exchange that he was speaking to the foreman of the project, Al Peters.

“We’re working a case that may have something to do with this site,” he explained. “You have a J. B. Moule working here?”

The frown deepened. Peters sighed, glanced down past his beer belly to the toes of his scarred, cement-splashed leather boots, then back up at the trooper, and sucked his front teeth.

“Yeah—against my better judgment—but he didn’t show for work this morning, so I can always hope that he’s quit. What’s he done now?”

“I understand from his parole officer that you’ve had trouble with his aggressive behavior.”

“
You
could call it trouble. I’d probably use stronger language. Couldn’t prove anything—not enough to fire him. He’s a real piece of work, a real bone-deep mean bastard. Most of my crew leaves him strictly alone—walks wide circles around him.”

“Tell us about it.”

The essentials of the description of Moule’s confrontations with his co-workers matched what John McIntire had told them earlier, except that Peters labeled them fights, not arguments.

“I almost handed him his walking papers after the second one—when Vern’s brakes—or lack of them—almost got him killed. He was a good man, worked for me eight years. We all figure Moule was responsible—just can’t say how. Unfortunately, even firing him wouldn’t be the last of it. He all but promised he’d retaliate if we didn’t leave him alone, and that
we wouldn’t like whatever he had in mind. I don’t go around asking for violence—or sabotage. Long as he does his job this year, I’ll put up with his attitude. Season’s just about over, anyway and I don’t want to fight with the authorities.”

“He miss any work?”

“Fair amount. Comes and goes. Works just enough to keep his parole officer off his case, if not happy.”

“Can you give me specific dates?”

“Sure. Come on into the office and I’ll show you his record.”

They walked together across to the portable office and up steps built of raw lumber. Inside were three desks, one clearly belonging to the foreman and the one nearest it empty except for a pile of blueprints. From the third, a thin woman with a tired-looking face glanced up as they entered. Peters waved a casual hand in her direction—“One of our bookkeepers”—then gave her a moment’s attention. “Feeling better, Judy?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Maalox and something to eat took care of it.”

“Good.” He turned back to the troopers.

“Well, here’s the time sheets.” He handed Jensen a book that included the summer’s work schedule for each man, and Alex flipped through the pages, paying particular attention to the last two weeks.

J. B. Moule had missed a considerable amount of work—at least half his work hours in the preceding week. The Tuesday Jessie’s brakes had failed, wrecking the truck, he had worked all day, but Wednesday he hadn’t showed up till just before one o’clock. Whenever the tampering had been done, Alex thought it unlikely it would have been during the day, while she was watching the dog lot. Thursday, the day Jim Bradford’s goat had been injured, Moule hadn’t come to work at all. Friday he was also absent. The other harassment—the rock through the window, the vandalizing of the Knik cabin, the traps in the dog lot—had all been done at night or on the
weekend. All Moule’s work record proved was that he could have had the opportunity for most of the trouble.

“If he was angry at someone, do you think he might harass someone else—someone connected or related to his real target?” Jensen asked Peters.

“Ah, so that’s the way the wind blows. It’s an interesting question that I won’t ask you to explain.” He paused, considering, then nodded. “I wouldn’t put much of anything past him. He’d do whatever he figured would be most effective, cause the most damage and pain, whatever.”

“Ever notice what kind of boots he wears?”

“Can’t say I have. Work boots, pretty much like the rest.”

They talked for a few minutes more, but gained little. Peters was as uneasy about Moule as McIntire had been—as little inclined to go out of his way to take risks with J.B.’s temper.

“Wouldn’t hurt to keep our visit to yourself,” Jensen suggested as they were leaving.

“Hey, I’m not about to let it get back to him that I was talking to the cops.”

“Please have a word with your bookkeeper, too.”

“Judy? Sure. She doesn’t know Moule—only comes into the office a couple of days a week. She and her husband handle our books, but they do most of the work at home. She’s okay; but I’ll speak to her.”

“Thanks.”

“M
oule doesn’t exactly inspire warm, fuzzy feelings, does he?” Caswell commented as they drove across town to the home address McIntire had provided for Moule.

“Nope. This feels like a bad one, and all the pieces fit so far. Seems a little odd, though, that he wouldn’t do better at covering his tracks.”

The Mountain View address turned out to be a duplex that not only needed paint badly, but had a piece of plywood re
placing the broken part of a front window. A tired-looking green Chevrolet sedan sat close to the building in the driveway, with room behind it for another vehicle. One rear tire was flat, the axle held off the ground with a concrete block. The front fender on the driver’s side was a mismatched tan replacement.

“Must not be here,” Cas said. “That can’t be what he uses to get back and forth to work.”

They could easily hear commentary from a radio or television through the thin walls of the apartment.

“Somebody’s home,” Alex said. “Must be hard to heat this place in the winter.”

On the step next door, a youngster of ten or eleven, in a stained jacket with a ripped pocket, sat idly spinning the wheel of an overturned bicycle and watched them walk up to his neighbor’s front door.

“Hi, there.” Caswell nodded in his direction.

“He ain’t home,” the kid said, giving the wheel another spin.

“Who ‘ain’t’?”

“J.B. ain’t—not since Saturday. Just his old man. You the cops?”

Caswell didn’t answer the question, but gave Alex a knowing glance and lowered his voice. “Pick it up young, don’t they?”

Jensen shrugged and shook his head in response, rapped on the door, and stepped back to wait.

It was soon opened a crack to reveal a discouraged and weary expression on the face of a graying man in his late forties. A yellowing bruise discolored his left cheekbone.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Moule?”

“Yeah.”

“Could we talk to you for a few minutes, please?”

“What about?”

“It’s about your son, J.B.”

The line of his lips thinned and his shoulders drooped as he
swung back the door to allow them access to a small living room. Turning his back, he walked away from the door, leaving it open, and switched off the television news he had been watching.

“Sit, if you want,” he said, waving a hand at a sagging sofa. Jensen did and was immediately sorry, as a broken spring prodded his thigh. Caswell, noting his wince, perched on the arm in self-defense, a twinkle of amusement in his eyes that he didn’t allow to reach his mouth.

“What’s the kid done now?” Moule’s father asked, seating himself on a wobbly dinette chair, and lighting a cigarette with a kitchen match.

Kid?
Jensen mentally questioned. It had been a long time since J. B. Moule could qualify in that category.

“Your son lives here with you, right, Mr. Moule?”

“Yeah, since he got out of jail. At least he usually shows up sometime every couple of days.”

“He didn’t show up for work today. You have any idea where we might locate him?”

“Nope. Doesn’t tell me where he’s going, or when. Left…ah…this morning sometime. I don’t know when—early, I guess. Don’t know when he’ll be home. Sometime pretty late, I guess, or maybe tomorrow.”

He was lying, and not well.

“Don’t, Mr. Moule. The kid next door says differently. How long has it really been since you last saw your boy?”

The father looked at them in haggard silence for a minute, saying nothing, clearly knowing that his attempt to cover for his son was not working. Unconsciously he wrung his hands in his lap, twisting his fingers together in demoralized frustration. Turning his head, he stared blankly at the dead television screen as he gave up and told them what seemed to be the truth.

“Saturday.”

“What time?”

“About noon.”

“Say anything at all about where he was going or when he would be back?”

“No. Like I told you, he doesn’t…”

His voice faded and he lifted a hand to rub at the bruise on his face.

“He’s giving you a pretty bad time, isn’t he, Mr. Moule?” Caswell asked suddenly in a quiet voice. “He give you that bruise, too?”

“No.” The answer came too quickly, making the truth apparent to the troopers.

“You don’t have to let it be that way,” Ben told him sympathetically. “You know it’s against his parole. If you want it to stop, we can do something about it—with your help.”

“No,” he said sharply, shaking his head. “It was just the once…really. He’s not such a bad boy. Just…”

Yeah, thought Alex sadly. Few of them ever are, at least to their parents—just misguided.

“Mr. Moule,” he asked, “does J.B. have his own room in this house?”

A nod.

“Could we take a look at it, with your permission, please?”

The elder Moule got to his feet, holding one elbow tight to his ribs, hinting at hurts he was too proud or ashamed to mention. Without a word, he led them to a short hallway and pointed to a closed door at the end.

“I better tell you,” he said, hanging his head, looking down at a worn spot in the carpet. “You may find a gun in there.”

He turned and headed back to the small living room, where they heard the sound of television switched back on.

But the first thing they found was not a weapon. Lying on the floor at the foot of the unmade bed was a pair of work boots covered with dry cement. Carefully turning one over to examine its sole, Jensen held it up for Caswell’s inspection.

“This look familiar?” he asked.

There was no mistaking it. The pattern of the tread matched the prints they had found in the woods near the Knik cabin—and the casts Timmons had examined in the crime lab.

They had searched the room far enough to find a shotgun
in the back of the closet when the front door slammed open hard enough to rebound off the living room wall, and the loud roar of a voice angrily shouting stopped them.

“Goddammit, you fuckin’ old fool. Where the hell are they? You stupid idiot, let the law in here without a warrant?”

As J.B. came crashing and stomping down the hall to the door of his room, Jensen did not hesitate, but quickly drew the .357 Magnum he usually wore on duty in town. The sight of it momentarily halted the flow of invective the younger Moule was spouting, as well as his approach. He hesitated, glowering, in the doorway, clearly furious at their presence and his father’s part in it.

He was wider, stronger looking than Alex remembered from the trial, and he noticed again that Moule’s head appeared small compared to the rest of him. As if it belonged to a child, it seemed to sit almost directly on his shoulders without benefit of a neck, emphasized by an upper body so well muscled that it seemed to strain the seams of his gray flannel-lined jacket. He had obviously taken advantage of bodybuilding equipment in prison. His eyes, nose, and mouth were oddly spaced, close together in the middle of his face below a broad forehead, which was accentuated by a receding hairline that bared the front half of his skull, except for a fringe over his ears.

“What the hell you think you’re doing? You got a warrant? If not, get the fuck out of my house.”

“We have your father’s permission, so stop right there, J.B., and don’t make any moves or you’ll regret them. Lean over, put your hands on the wall, and spread your legs. You know the drill.”

“Fuck you. You got nothing. You can’t just fuckin’—”

“
Do it
,” Alex barked at him, remembering Moule’s threats during and after the trial, as well as his reportedly vicious temper and attitude. “If you don’t do it now, I’ll assume you’re resisting arrest and add threatening an officer to the list. You’re still on parole, Moule. Don’t try it.”

It had been a long time since he had seen such total, all
consuming rage on anyone’s face. For a long moment, Moule swayed in the door, clenching and unclenching his fists, seeming to exude heat, using every ounce of his shrewdness and cunning to assess the balance of the situation and his chances of upsetting it. As Alex returned his glare, weapon ready, and gave him not an inch of opportunity, he finally turned and stiffly assumed the position the trooper had demanded, still alert and ready to cause trouble.

Taking no chances, Caswell quickly handcuffed and searched him, turning up a handgun and lifting a large, exceedingly sharp hunting knife from a scabbard on his belt.