Everybody Lies: Talkeetna, #1

By L.J. Breedlove

She fled her abuser, but a killer followed her

 

Paul Kitka likes fast cars, women and his job as a lieutenant in the Alaska State Patrol. He likes living in Talkeetna, a small town full of quirky people he's happy to call friends and neighbors. Life is good.

 

Candace Marshall doesn't know what she likes — being married to an abusive husband had stripped her of all personal preferences. She likes good coffee. She likes her landlord's kids. She even likes her new job as office manager for Purdue Flight Service. And to her surprise, she likes Alaska.

 

She came to Alaska to disappear. She chose Talkeetna, a small, remote town at the base of Mount Denali, to start over with a different name — in a state her husband hates, and the state hates him back. It was her best chance.

 

When Candace finds him dead in her cabin, her first thought is to run again. Who would believe she didn't kill him?

 

When Lt. Paul Kitka sees a murdered abusive husband, he assumes the wife killed him — and in Alaska? No one's going to convict her. But Candace Marshall insists she didn't do it, and reluctantly, he believes her.

 

So then, who did kill the lobbyist in Alaska hates so much?

Turns out half of Talkeetna had a reason to kill the man, and everyone is lying to him: Candace, the victim's family and co-workers, even Paul's friends and neighbors. And his investigation is exposing all of their secrets.

 

Now his job is on the line, his town is angry at him, and his partner wants to arrest Candace for murder. But what worries Paul the most, is that in a town full of unstable and angry people, the murderer isn't done.

 

Get started now with book one in Talkeetna, a crime mystery series full of people who aren't what they seem to be, set in an isolated Alaskan town where a cat was elected mayor for a decade.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L.J. Breedlove
• Release date: Sep 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301670451

L.J. Breedlove

L.J. Breedlove is a former journalist writing mysteries and thrillers about what she knows: complicated people, small towns, big cities, cops, reporters, politicians, assorted bad guys. "I write about religion and politics. About race and gender. I believe in the journalism axiom: Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. To which the labor organizer Mother Jones was supposed to have added: And in general raise hell. That works for me." L.J. grew up on a cattle ranch and then went to college to be an oceanographer. She decided getting seasick was not a good trait for an oceanographer to have, and discovered journalism instead — a field that liked people who asked questions! As a reporter and editor, she worked in Alaska, Oregon, Idaho, Texas, Washington, D. C. Then she got homesick for the Pacific Northwest and came home to work with college newspapers and teach journalism. She is an over-educated, bleeding heart liberal with a penchant for heroes such as Jack Reacher. She isn't particularly bothered by the inconsistency. You can follow her on Twitter @ljbreedlove for her political stuff, or on Facebook ljbreedlove for her writing life. Best place to find her -- besides a local coffee shop -- is at ljbreedlove.com. You can sign up for her email newsletter there. Or read her blog, snark included, and check out all her books.

Book preview

Editor’s Note

I’ve always admired writers who boasted of their accuracy in describing the place of their novel. If I say there’s a deli on the corner of X and Y, then you can go there and see the deli, they say.

I’m not that writer. I don’t think anyone really is. That deli may have been there when they wrote the book, but is it still there when I read it?

Places change. Talkeetna is not the place it was when I first visited it – or when I last did so. In fact, I saw it the first time in September, the last time in June. June is climbing season – it’s a completely different place then. And winter? Those who experience winter in Talkeetna know the place in a completely different way.

In fact, the Talkeetna I experience and the one you experience will be different as well. Places are no more unchanging than people are.

This Talkeetna belongs to Paul Kitka and Candace Marshall. Enjoy.

Prologue

FROM THE DIARY

OF CANDACE MARSHALL

AUGUST 5. I came to Alaska because I have always wanted to see the state and because it will be an easy place to die. Deciding to die is simple, carrying it out isn’t. I thought about pills, but the only thing I had in the medicine chest was aspirin. Where was I supposed to find poison or even sleeping pills? Cut my throat with the butcher knife? My kitchen knives weren’t sharp enough to cut up a chicken. Besides, the last time the doctor asked me to prick my finger for a blood test, I couldn’t do it — and passed out when she pricked it for me. I bought a gun — a snub-nosed .38 — and took lessons at a range. I liked shooting. I liked the precise, lethal control it gave me. But when I imagined putting the gun to my mouth and pulling the trigger, it seemed messy, and what happens if you survive it? With half a face?

But Alaska. In Alaska you could just pick a trail and start hiking. Something would eventually get you — the animals or the weather or the terrain. Hiking into oblivion, now that had possibilities.

I asked myself if there was anything I wanted badly enough to stay alive for and remembered as a child I always wanted to go to Alaska. Back then, I collected everything I could find about the state. I sent away for all the tourism information, wrote to the Native tribes asking for literature. I wanted to go to Alaska. I had the trip all planned out. We would drive up the AlCan Highway, tour the state, take the train to Seward, and then finally come back down the Marine Highway. I pored over the pictures of the Southeast Islands’ pine-covered beauty. I studied glaciers. I wanted to see the tundra. I drew pictures of igloos.

We never went. My mother died, and my father was so busy trying to be both mother and father to a twelve-year-old girl that the trip to Alaska kept getting postponed. He and I camped all over the Northwest together from our home in Seattle, but we never made that trip.

Now I was here. Alone. My father... well, I don’t want to think about him right now. I don’t want to think about any of the people in my life. I want to think about Alaska.

I got here yesterday morning by Alaska Airlines and took the bus out to the Eagle River campgrounds. I figured out the bus schedules by myself. No one sneered at me or called me stupid or said there was a better way. I feel as if I am a plant stretching toward the sun, embracing a new-found freedom.

The Eagle River campgrounds were beautiful, but full of campers — families with kids, retired couples in RVs, a tour group of Asian teens. I got there early enough to find a spot and set up my tent. It’s been awhile since those days of camping with Dad, and I fumbled around a bit. But I got it up by myself. It felt pretty good to do that.

I hadn’t planned on the tourists. I envisioned wide-open spaces, untouched wilderness. It is that, but the wilderness edges are clotted with tourists in Winnebagos and Caravans.

The magnitude of the wilderness stuns me. Here I am, in the most developed part of the state, and last night I listened to wild animals rummage through the garbage cans.

I expected to hike two or three days to reach Montana Creek where I planned to stay. But I met this character — no other word describes her — and got a ride. So, I am settled in along the banks of Montana Creek. It is so wide it looks more like a lake. More about that later. I want to keep a diary, but I have never been good at writing. A friend, back when I had friends, told me she recorded her thoughts. I bought a small Sony recorder and a whole sack of tapes at the Goodwill for a buck, and here I sit talking to myself. That’s fine. It’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re crazy, right?

So, I got a ride with this trucker. I have to describe Mickey, she’s something else.

I was walking along the Glenn Highway on my way toward Wasilla, about 40 miles away, when the roaring sounds of an 18-wheeler startled me. I swung around to look, and the truck slowed to a stop beside me. The thing was huge — it had three trailers and there seemed to be more wheels and axles than normal. The passenger side door opened, and the driver leaned across the seat.

Howdy, this woman called to me. She was a substantially sized woman whose face said ‘trust me’ under her tightly permed gray hair. She had on a plaid flannel shirt and jeans. She offered me a ride. I hesitated, but truth tell, my shoulders were beginning to ache under my pack.

Her name was Sarah McIntosh; she said everyone called her Mickey. I told her my name was Dace, short for Candace. She didn’t comment on the lack of a last name.

Mickey said — I hope I can get it right, because I loved listening to her — Not Candy? I don’t blame you. I’ve got an Aunt Candace, down Seward way. She’s 70, I’d guess. Still goes out on her boat every day during fishing season. She wouldn’t stand for Candy either. God, she’s a tough old bird. Can’t imagine calling her Candy. But Dace, that’s different. That’s a strong name.

I wondered if she saw a strong woman when she looked at me. I doubted it, knowing the basics of what she would see: a slim woman of average height, with brown hair in a braid down her back. Did my thirty years show yet? Probably not. I still get carded in bars, and the white T-shirt, blue jeans and hiking boots I was wearing wouldn’t help.

I asked her about her truck.

Up here, there aren’t all those regulations like the Lower 48 has, Mickey explained. You can haul whatever you think you can. I’m a sloper, so I want to haul as much as I can any trip I make. Just add another axle or two. Make sure the strobes are attached and I’m on my way.

A sloper? I asked.

That’s what they call us guys who haul things up to the North Slope oil fields, and the guys who work up there. Slopers.

Mickey said it took her eight hours to drive from Anchorage to Fairbanks and another ten up the haul road to Dead Horse Camp. It was gravel part way.

Mickey asked me how I’d gotten this far from Anchorage and I explained about the bus and Eagle River. I didn’t say where I’d been before that. She frowned a bit, and asked bluntly, You going to tell me about it?

I tried to hedge, and then to change the subject as we turned off the Glenn Highway and onto the George Parks and rolled into Wasilla.

Mickey said she was always glad to get through Wasilla because it meant she was finally out of the city. Strange to think that people commuted from Wasilla into Anchorage, 45 miles away. But Mickey said they did; there was even rush-hour traffic.

Wasilla was a blur of strip malls and convenience stores. I didn’t see much to recommend it. People move out to get away from the city and then they bring the worst of the city with them.

As soon as we were out of town, Mickey reverted back to her previous subject: How dangerous Alaska was for a person alone.

Last fall, I was driving this road in my pickup and came upon a bear just waddling down the road ahead of me. I figured he’d head for the bush when I got up on him. Instead, he turned back and walked right up to my vehicle. I stopped. He gets up on his hind feet, puts his paws on the hood and looks at me, like, ‘what do you think you’re doing, gal?’ I sat very still until he’d made his point, and he turned and started back down the road again.

You’d be safe in a vehicle, wouldn’t you? I asked. Turns out that isn’t necessarily so. Mickey said a bear could knock out a window. I saw a bear once who was cornered by some wolves. Up on the haul road. One wolf got too close and that old bear got a swipe at him. Knocked the wolf 70 feet. They can pop open a car if they get mad.

Staying near the highways was no guarantee of safety, Mickey warned me. You can run into bear in the Anchorage suburbs. Other animals too. Moose, for instance. They can be dangerous as a bear. They come right into Anchorage as well. One of them walked into a bank lobby last year. Panicked everyone. Finally, someone was smart enough to open a door at the other end of the lobby, and the moose sauntered on out.

I assured her that I planned to be careful and that I carried a gun. She said the gun was a good thing. I could tell she was still troubled. Finally, she said, If you need a friend, tell old Mickey here. Us Alaskans, we’re used to pulling together. Maybe I can help.

Why should you? You don’t know me. I turned to stare out the window, hoping she’d take the hint. She didn’t.

Curiosity, partly. I want to know what a cheechako like you is doing wandering around loose like this.

Cheechako?

Newcomer, Mickey explained. It’s a Russian word, I guess. The Native Alaskans, they call newcomers — all whites really — gussaks. And when that ‘s’ sound starts to hiss, you know you’re in deep shit.

I couldn’t help but smile.

Are you vacationing or headed to a job? she persisted.

Just headed, I said, deliberately vague. I’ll camp for a while, but then I want to find a job. Maybe Fairbanks.

Mickey frowned. You aren’t going to be able to camp for long, she said. Winter’s going to be early this year. Already had a freeze. And the fireweed is blooming to the top.

Freezes in August?

Mickey raised an eyebrow. The Slope’s had snow already. Summer isn’t very long.

I read everything I could get my hands on before coming to the state, but still, actually being here was different. I wondered if this would affect my plans much; if anything, an early winter would make dying easier.

You got a job lined up? Mickey pressed. I shook my head. She drove in silence for a bit as she digested that. I know a guy in Talkeetna, she said finally. Runs a flight service there. He needs an office manager. You interested?

Purdue Flight Service was almost always in need of an office manager, Mickey said, and she figured chances were good that the one from last month had given up in disgust. Bets had been against the guy to last through July. Men didn’t stay long in that position; women didn’t fare much better.

Why would he hire me? He doesn’t know me.

He’d hire anyone who’s willing to put up with his shit. Purdue isn’t an easy man to work for. He goes through three, four office managers a year. Pilots stay longer — they’re out in planes most the time.

Mickey was searching for the right thing to say as they entered the city limits of Willow. Downtown Willow, she said, gesturing to four or five buildings clustered together along the side of the road.

The storefronts were cute, too cute for my tastes. Mickey said the buildings were from the attempt in the ‘70s to move the capital nearer to Anchorage, instead of in Juneau. The voters said no, but there had already been much land speculation. The result was a strip of five overly cute buildings along the highway.

I think you ought to consider taking the job. Besides, if you can keep Lanky in line, you’d be doing us all a favor.

Lanky? That’s his name? I didn’t want to offend this woman. I liked her. But I didn’t want a future. I want an end.

Lanky Purdue, Mickey said. He’s an old sourdough — some one who’s been here a while, she explained at my questioning look. He came in with the military during the early ‘60s and stayed when his hitch was over. He’s a damn fine bush pilot, even now. Crazy of course. They all are. But he saved his money and bought a couple of planes. He’s an expert at flying in the expeditions to Denali. He takes in hunters and hikers and anyone who needs to go somewhere by plane. Which is most of Alaska. Like most flight services, he flies passengers and cargo — anything that needs moving.

And you call him Lanky. I wondered if that meant he was tall and thin, or if like most male humor, he was fat.

Yeah. He’s about six foot five, and thin as an Alaska spruce. Wait ‘til you see him unfold out of a cockpit.

There was a moment of silence.

Look, Mickey said. Talkeetna’s just a bit down the road. We’ll swing in, I’ll introduce you to Purdue. If the two of you hit it off, you’re all set. If you don’t, you climb back in the rig, and I’ll drop you off wherever you say.

I almost took her up on it. It mattered that someone — even a stranger — cared. But I couldn’t say the words.

Talkeetna’s kind of an interesting place, actually, Mickey said as if she was trying to sell me on the idea. It’s an international crowd. Expeditions going up the mountain. Hunters and fishermen going up the river. Some mining and trapping. But it’s primarily a bunch of left-over hippies. God knows how they got up here. You sure you don’t want an introduction to Lanky?

I shook my head. Talkeetna. Of all places. No.

If you change your mind, you look him up in Talkeetna. Tell him I sent you, Mickey said, recognizing defeat.

Mickey was listening to some of Garrison Keillor’s stories about Lake Woebegone. Even though she must have listened to them a million times, Mickey chuckled as she repeated the closing line, where the women are strong, the men are beautiful and all the children above average.

Makes me think of Alaska, specially that about the women being strong, she said.

I wish I was strong.

Chapter 1

Paul Kitka was trying to keep his Corvette at 100 mph on the George Parks Highway, but the road just wasn’t designed for that speed. The road was straight enough and, in the late summer, without ice, but the tourists, their Winnebagos and the tour buses, made it an obstacle course. Still, the day was crisp and clear, and it suited his mood. He grinned at himself in the rearview mirror. It had been a fine weekend; he told his mirror image. A fine September weekend.

He wasn’t so euphoric that he forgot to keep his eye on the radar detectors on his dash. One detector pointed forward, the second to the back. State troopers were always embarrassed when they had to stop other troopers. Not to mention that his captain got a bit bent the last time he’d been clocked at 120 mph. He’d gone out and bought the second after that. You weren’t supposed to need two radar detectors, but the back range was only a mile. At 120 mph, that gave you 30 seconds warning — not much reaction time. He hadn’t been clocked since he installed the second one.

As Paul Kitka pulled into range of the station, his cellular phone rang. Figures, he thought, scowling at it. He rolled up his window, and turned down Peter, Paul and Mary blaring from his CD player.

Kitka, he answered.

Lieutenant, we just got a call of a dead body in Talkeetna, the dispatcher said. Woman asked for you. Do you want to grab it, or should I get someone else?

Who is it?

Victim unknown. Gun shot. The person who found the body is Mary Abbott’s new boarder, Candace Marshall.

Mary was easily the best cook within a hundred miles, and she always was willing to put on another plate for a stray cop. Paul Kitka edged up his speed. I’ll take it. I’m about 20 minutes out. He rummaged under his seat, found his emergency flasher and set it on the dashboard. A bit disgruntled, he also flipped off the radar detectors. Legitimate speeding wasn’t nearly as much fun.

The dispatcher answered him with crisp professionalism. Roger. I’ll call for a back-up team to meet you.

Thanks, Jonesy, Kitka said, disregarding protocol. Captain would be annoyed if he overhead, Kitka thought, then smiled. He flipped on the CB, listening for chatter, but no one was gossiping about the murder yet. It’d be a rare thing for him to get to a murder scene before the gossip got out.

Kitka passed the stretch of road where’d he’d helped a redheaded tourist fix a flat last Thursday. The flat tire had led to other things. A true redhead, too, he thought, smiling at the memory of the weekend. He’d gotten a later start out of Fairbanks this morning than he’d planned. He figured the late start was a worthy price.

He looked at himself in the rearview mirror again. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, he quoted out loud.

Paul Kitka knew he was considered a good-looking man. At 35, he was grateful for it. He didn’t have problems attracting women even in this state where women could be fairly scarce. A good thing. He wasn’t into commitment and most women were, leading to a constant turnover problem. He wondered if he would run out of available women one day. Of course, there were always tourists.

Tourists were not particularly valued in Alaska, except for the money they brought in. Kitka found their ignorance about the state appalling, but it didn’t interfere with his dalliances with the female version. They found him exotic with the Tlingit-white heritage that produced pale brown skin, straight black hair and broad muscular shoulders. He was taller than most Natives at five feet 10 inches. Being of mixed blood had to have some advantage, he thought