“What about the kids on the other list I sent you, the unaffiliated ones from the yearbook?”
“One of those, a guy named Augie Pardee, is deceased—accidental drug overdose. Two, John Borman and Bill Farmdale, live in Anchorage. Three more—Alex Walker, Phil Bonham, and Ron Wolf—still live in Homer. The last one, Kevin Markham, is an Army Ranger currently deployed to South Korea. I’ve got addresses and phone numbers on everyone in Alaska other than the dead guy, but I managed to locate a home phone number for his parents. They’re still in Homer, too. As for tracking down the Ranger? Good luck with that.”
“I’m guessing he’s somebody who got tired of being pushed around and decided to push back.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Todd said. “I also found Chris’s driver’s license. I’m sending along a copy of it because of the photo on it, but that original license has never been renewed.”
That wasn’t good news. In the world as it is now, no one goes anywhere without some kind of currently valid government-issued ID.
“Okay,” Todd concluded. “I just pressed send on a file containing everything I’ve located so far, and I’ll pass along whatever else I find as it becomes available.”
“And thanks for all this,” I told him. “It certainly gives me somewhere to start.”
Once Todd’s e-mail came in, I opened the file folder and then sat for a time scrolling through the material. The driver’s license showed up first. The photo had probably been taken within months of the one in the yearbook, so that wasn’t much help.
As I shopped through the various names, each was a bread crumb that might or might not lead me in the right direction for investigating Christopher Danielson’s disappearance. As Todd had pointed out, other than the guy doing a tour of duty in South Korea, everyone else was still in Alaska. That probably meant that I needed to be in Alaska, too.
I suppose I could have picked up my phone and started shopping through the collection of phone numbers Todd had helpfully supplied, but I didn’t. In my experience if you want truthful answers to difficult questions, you need to be looking at the person you’re interviewing—meeting that individual face-to-face and eyeball-to-eyeball. Talking over the phone is not the same thing. But going to Alaska in the dead of winter? Even with a brand-new parka in hand, that hardly sounded inviting.
I glanced out the window. By now the clouds had parted. Bright sunshine glittered off the thick layer of snow covering our backyard, and my iPad indicated the temperature in Bellingham right then had risen to a balmy eighteen degrees. Just for the hell of it, I checked the temperature in Anchorage. According to AccuWeather, the temperature there coming up on noon was an almost toasty thirty-nine in comparison, and the predicted low that night was thirty-three—both of which were far higher than I had expected.
Then I checked for flights. The ones from Bellingham to Anchorage all went by way of Seattle, but at the moment every flight from Bellingham to anywhere that day was either canceled or delayed due to issues with the airport’s deicing equipment. The flights going to and from Seattle and Anchorage were fine. In other words, the only way to catch a flight to Anchorage that day was to get my butt to SeaTac Airport.
Meteorologists will tell you that somewhere between Bellingham and Seattle there’s what’s called a convergence zone, a spot where competing weather systems meet up and duke it out. That’s exactly where the previous day’s Pineapple Express had collided with the polar vortex, just south of Mount Vernon. Above Mount Vernon it had been all snow all the time. By now our weather had moved east, leaving behind roads covered with ice and snow. Below Mount Vernon the drenching rains continued, triggering a spate of flash floods and mudslides.
There was a 5:45 p.m. flight from SeaTac that would have me in Anchorage by eight thirty. I called Mel first, to see if she could come pick up Sarah and her goods at lunchtime to take the dog back to police HQ. Then I booked a seat, packed up, and headed south.
Out of deference to Chief Soames, the snowplow folks had not only cleared our driveway but had made a path from our place straight down to the main drag. From there it was only a hop, a skip, and a jump to southbound I-5, and that had been sanded to within an inch of its life. I started toward Seattle under clear blue skies, but those disappeared the more I traveled south. At first the landscape was covered with snow, but as I neared Mount Vernon, the fields along the freeway were bleak, wall-to-wall mud. By the time I reached Everett, it was raining pitchforks and hammer handles, but I managed to make my way to SeaTac without any problem.
Once at the airport, I took note of the level and row where the car was parked, then went inside. I was plenty early, so I checked into the lounge and spent the wait booking a hotel room and renting a car.
“Yes,” I told the car-rental agent, “I definitely want four-wheel drive, heated seats, and a heated steering wheel.”
“And Blizzak tires?” she asked.
If those were some kind of winter-weather tire, I had never encountered them before. “Are those recommended?” I asked.
“Definitely,” she said.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Blizzak it is.”
I had purchased a first-class seat on the plane, so I had dinner—a grilled hot sandwich, a salad, and a bag of chips. It wasn’t exactly sumptuous, but it did the trick. I spent the rest of the time continuing to sort through the material Todd had sent me.
He’d helpfully let me know that Danitza Miller was currently working day-shift hours—7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.—in the ER at Anchorage General. As a single woman with a relatively young child, she probably wouldn’t be thrilled to have a complete stranger show up on her doorstep at home unannounced and late at night. It seemed to me that it might be better for me to track her down at her workplace the next day. That way I could at least introduce myself in public. These days guys can’t be too careful in those kinds of situations. Even with the best of intentions, it’s far too easy for private male/female interactions to end up being deemed inappropriate.
So once I got to Anchorage, I collected my car—a Ford SUV model that Mel and I used to refer to as “Exploders.” As ordered, it came with four-wheel drive, heated seats, and the highly recommended Blizzak tires, so I was good to go. I dialed the Captain Cook Hotel’s information into the vehicle’s internal GPS and let the car direct me to where I was going. I know I’ve had my issues with technology over the years, but when you’re in a strange city, a GPS system with audio included has it hands down over a physical map.