ALASKA BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
ANCHORAGE, A.K.

“There is reality, and there is imagination. Do you know what the difference is? In reality, shit can be touched and seen. Imagination is for things that don’t exist, like the wage gap or Jesus or vampires – ”

“You need to shut up, or I’m not calling you ever again.”

“ – so when you tell me that I’m making something up, I want to be sure that you know the difference between imagination and reality.”

Costello family conversations were never-ending circles of bantering and bickering. As it were, only two members remained, and Avery wasn’t averse to removing her brother’s vocal cords so she could live the rest of her life in peace. Because arguments were their primary mode of showing affection, Sam was the only person alive she let give her shit.

“Fine,” she conceded. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Come and visit me, but we both know you’re not going to sit in a place for eleven hours.” He laughed and made a weak attempt at insisting otherwise, but she cut him off again. “Listen, I have to go. I’m carrying coffees, and if I drop these, I’m going to – ”

“Coffees? Plural?”

“New partner. He’s a dick, but we kind of got into it yesterday and I’m trying to apologize. I don’t have time to explain.”

Avery balanced one coffee on top of the other and stuffed her phone into her coat. With her free hand, she flashed her badge in the lobby, but she was still stopped. It as only her first week with the Bureau. In addition to her badge, she needed another ID, and the guard sighed when he looked at her driver’s license. “Oh, right. You’re the Massachusetts girl. Just go.”

The ABI office inhabited the fourth and fifth floors of a non-descript government building that was, conveniently, near absolutely no modes of public transportation. Her car was still in Boston, so she’d walked the mile to work from her shoebox downtown apartment. As penance for hoofing it in the cold, her first sip of coffee was lukewarm at best. Here, Duke. Sorry I called you an insufferable asshole yesterday. Enjoy your bathwater coffee. Sincerely, Costello. It hadn’t been her finest moment, but she blamed her temper on not being “settled in” yet. The new job, state, and apartment were full of eccentricities that required patience and grace – neither of which she had in abundance.

She barely got to her desk and took off her coat when the Captain McCann called for her. “Costello. Conference room. Now.”

Something was happening. The last week had been full of trainings and a slog of deskwork – a rookie welcoming, she supposed. For the most part, Anchorage wasn’t teeming with murders and mysteries, and she was beginning to regret upheaving her life to chase this job opportunity. A dark feeling in her stomach insisted that this particular summoning was bad. Maybe it had something to do with her attitude the day before.

The blinds were up in the conference room, and Avery saw McCann chatting with Duke. They had folders spread all over the table. Her bad feeling eased a bit, but as soon as she shouldered open the door, she heard the tail end of what McCann had been saying.

“ – ferry doesn’t run again until after the solstice. Small-town bullshit, you know. You’ll be there for a month and a half, at least.” He looked up when Avery entered the room. “You’re taking the rook. A little bonding trip. You two need it.”

Whatever McCann was saying, she stopped listening. Her eyes were glued to the glossy photos displayed on the table. They were poor quality, she noticed. Likely they were blown up from a smartphone. She set the coffees down and tucked her hair behind her ears before touching the edge of one of the pictures. The specific kind of carnage depicted she'd only seen as results of animal attacks.

"A little bonding," Avery murmured, still engrossed in the files. "Is that what you're calling this?"

Monday morning, fifteen minutes earlier
ABI BREAK ROOM

“How’s your case going, Kimo?” A grunt was all Tom got in response, but he’d known better than to expect much from his three-hundred-pound, wrong side of fifty-five Hawaiian friend. A former Navy man, the guy kept secrets better than the dead did and wasn’t much of a talker to begin with. It was exactly why Tom, who loved the sound of his own voice and took no shame in the fact, had made it a daily habit to talk to the guy. There was nothing quite like shitty coffee and a free therapy session to start the day off right.

“Well, no news is good news,” replied Tom with a confident smile, the very same that had reduced sweet, god-fearing women to goo in his early twenties. At thirty-five, his brown hair was equal amounts salt and pepper, and what used to be a six-pack was a few notches short of a dad belly. Despite all this, he maintained a mischievous quality in his green eyes, and when he spoke, some of his famous Midwesterner charm came through. Tom took the man’s predictable silence as an invitation to slide into the chair next to his, then set his coffee mug and cellphone on the table and leaned back in his seat. “Wish I could say the same, but I’ve had one hell of a week, and—”

“What do you want?” Asked Kimo dryly as he laid the daily paper out on the table and leafed all the way to the horoscope section.

“What I always want: your expert advice,” stated Tom, undeterred by his buddy’s frigid act. “My new partner is a nutcase. Yesterday she had a meltdown because I made a comment about the Patriots. How was I supposed to know she’s from freaking Massachusetts, or that she cares about that stuff? Have you ever met a woman that even likes football?”

Kimo had met plenty. He was also pretty sure the offending conversation hadn’t been sports related, but Tom was like a train when he was fixated on something, and there was no point trying to squeeze a word in. Besides, it required less effort to ride out the one-sided venting session and let him talk about his feelings. Kimo looked up from his newspaper and studied his sensitive companion, wondering—as he did most mornings—how Tom had made it so far in life.

“And that got me thinking last night. She’s from Massachusetts.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Kimo said with a shrug. Stirring his coffee with one hand, he flipped through the newspaper until he got to the comics with the other.

“Maybe Salem didn’t get all the witches.” Tom stared and waited for his theory to sink in. The response he got came in the form of a tired sigh. It was the sound Kimo subconsciously made every time he’d had enough of Tom’s shit.

-----

Present
ABI CONFERENCE ROOM

It was some kind of bullshit, alright. Tom couldn’t even get McCann to approve a one-week leave for him to join Kimo on his yearly family vacations to Honolulu, but he was willing to send one of his best detectives—along with one greener than a tennis ball—on an almost-two-month-long work trip. Worst of all, they weren’t going anywhere far away or exotic. Or warm, for that matter. Tom groaned loudly—but whether it was in response to the shitty assignment, or Costello showing up, was unclear. He avoided eye contact with his new partner by feigning interest in the folder closest to him. He flipped it open, looked through some low-res crime scene photos with a mildly skeptical expression, then shut and tossed it back on the table after a couple of seconds.

“Sir, with all due respect, you want to send us to the Fox Islands because of some animal attacks?” Try as he might, he couldn't hide his annoyance. “Seems to me a simple call to Animal Control would be a better use of our time, not to mention the money the department would save on our per diem, along with the man hours.”

“First of all, Duke, just be glad I’m not sending you to the Rat Islands. Secondly, you let me worry about all that.” Just when Tom thought he was going to get away with one of McCann’s more diplomatic answers, the captain shut the door to the conference room, then continued. “Your job is to take the case you’re given and figure out the fuck whodunnit, not to waste my time by arguing or giving unsolicited advice.” McCann made it a point to look at both his detectives, daring either of them to argue.

Tom didn’t have anything to say and glanced at Costello, hoping the newbie had a death wish. Unfortunately, the captain cut their talking window short.

“Starting from around this time last year, there have been sixteen unsolved murders and twenty-nine missing persons reports filed in the city of Unalaska alone. This morning, I got a call from the mayor herself, telling me that the very same sheriff I was in contact with a week ago went missing on Friday, along with the granddaughter of a prominent member in The Aleut Corporation.” McCann took two folders from the table, opened them, and slid them closer to the detectives. The one in front of Tom was for a Sheriff Jimmy Faraday, an early-50s mixed Caucasian man with hazel eyes, cropped bottle-brown hair, and a thick gray mustache. To Tom, Jimmy gave off sort of a military veteran grandpa vibe. The second was for a Junior Deputy Kamiti Samuel, known by friends and family as Kami, a petite female in her early twenties with black hair, light brown eyes, horn-rimmed glasses, and a big smile. If not for the DOB, Tom would’ve aged her at about seventeen.

“Damn,” was all Tom could say. It wasn't that uncommon for small population areas to have missing people and the occasional homicide, but the Fox Islands wasn't the kind of place you arrived at or left without anyone knowing. He was sure some of the disappearances could've been caused by accidents, and the supposed murders a result of some animal altercations, but nearly fifty incidents in a year? He didn't want to admit it, but he could see why people were upset and why the situation justified an investigation.

“Damn is right,” McCann said. “I wish I had more intel for you, but with their sheriff missing and them being down a deputy, their office is undermanned and overworked, and we’ll be waiting weeks for those files to come in. Needless to say, we don’t have weeks, and that big storm rolling in before the weekend means the ferry company is closing shop early. I need you both on the boat by Wednesday morning. Any questions before I continue?”

Besides his growing frustration about the lack of prep time and info they were being given, what Tom really wanted to know was why McCann was sending in two homicide detectives to investigate a couple of disappearances. He settled for, “And we know they didn’t just get lost in the woods somewhere?”

“When you get there, the acting sheriff Senior Deputy Stillwell supposedly has some dash cam footage I’m told you’ll want to see. There’s also a Russian scientist, an ethologist, that saw something. We don’t know what that is because they’re refusing to work with authorities. How about you, Costello? Questions?”

Childhood in Avery’s railyard hometown had been a crash course in Boys’ Club politics. For years, it had only been her, Sam, and their dad in the house. Jimmy Costello liked to lean on his horn in traffic, point at a woman on the corner, and say to his kids in the backseat, “Don’t worry, she’s your mother.” He said the same thing when he found a Playboy Sam had wedged between the toilet tank and the wall. “Come on, Sammy, why do you have to jack it to your own ma?” Everyone was their mother. The news anchor, Avery’s third grade teacher, Jimmy’s favorite bartender. Once, Jimmy was arrested on the front lawn, and the two kids rolled their eyes while he “let” the female cop cuff him. “I’m only doing it,” he slurred, drunk, “because she helped me make the both of you.” He stayed a few extra days in a holding cell for that one.

In high school, she was “Sam’s little sister,” but that was a double-edged sword. Her brother’s friends were a pack of wild dogs that roved the streets with baseball bats, spray paint, and liquor bottles stolen from a rotating selection of family cabinets. They taught her how to drink, skip class, and sell Xanax prescriptions to rich people in Bunker Hill. You clean up okay, so they’ll trust you because you’re white. When she wanted to try out for the school soccer team, Jack Bilson laughed. “Have fun with the dykes.” Bilson probably gave her the most shit, but he also had her back the hardest. As teenagers do, some started a rumor that Sam’s friends only tolerated Avery because she gave them all blowjobs -- Bilson found that guy that started it and slashed his car tires. “I told him that if he started shit again, that I’d stuff his body inside the next tire, set it on fire, and leave it on his mother’s porch. Fucking bitch.”

She found it difficult to completely divorce herself from her hometown attitude. After college, she dated a nice guy who went to therapy and had a gay, polyamorous sister -- he acted like it gave him street cred for being a paragon of thoughtfulness. Avery was attracted to him at first because he was the opposite of what she was used to. Reluctantly, she accepted that she found his sensitivity grating. He asked her one night what she wanted in bed. “I want you to shut up,” she muttered, “and fuck me.” The relationship was doomed after that. She got drunk and called him a bitch, and he called her a hopeless charity case that only got into Northeastern because of Title IX. Yeah, she told Sam later that night on the phone, the nice ones are so much worse.

So when Thomas Duke, resident charmer of the ABI, said some sly comment about women and football, she saw a chessboard unfold. She bit back, sacrificing a pawn, but it was expected. His harmless Midwestern douchery was an empty shell compared to the minefield of bro-dude bullshit she’d waded through growing up. Avery was from that minefield, and as far as she was concerned, you don’t forget where you came from.

So far, Duke was harmless. It didn’t hurt that he was conventionally attractive, but “conventional” wasn’t really her bag. While maybe she thought he was a little too Wonderbread for her, a stranger would probably put her on the same shelf. Her wardrobe was half J. Crew and half free t-shirts from college. Average height, brown hair, good posture. Sam liked to give her shit for her blue eyes and say they were “from Mom,” but neither of them knew who that was. A running scholarship got her out, and she tried to keep up with it. Her body was the result of midnight circuits around her neighborhood -- something to get her mind to rest at night. Otherwise, she stood like a cop. It was impossible not to, and it was a dead giveaway.

She stuck a hand in one pocket while she flipped through photos, suppressing the urge to look away. Her other hand went to her necklace, something Bilson had given to her before he went overseas and gotten himself killed like a fucking idiot. McCann’s claim that he was sending them to the Fox Islands because of their quibbling rendered false to her -- maybe this was their chance. Sink or swim. Fuck it up, and their future was probably desk work. Sixteen unsolved murders was a big deal. If they couldn’t handle it, the Feds were the next step. Giving up her first big case because she couldn’t cut it wasn’t on her agenda.

The amount of disappearances was what stuck with Avery. It was eerie. Just...odd. Her eyes moved from the photos when she felt both McCann and Duke looking at her. “No questions,” she said. She nodded at Duke. “Guess we’re crashing here tonight, huh? Grab your sleeping bag.” They had two days to come up with a game plan before they showed up on someone else’s turf, asking their big city questions. The sleeping part was only half a joke. They likely wouldn’t have time for any rest of any sort before they left.

McCann gave them the room, and the balance in the air shifted somewhat.

“I’m sorry. About yesterday.” Avery rolled up the sleeves of her white collared shirt and looked Duke in the eye, to make up for how flat her apology sounded. She blinked, embarrassed by what she had to say next, and turned her back to him. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at the table, knowing that it would be worse to fake it than to pony up. “Any advice on how to start? This is my first big case.”

Great. Cool. Here we go.