Page 114 of One Last Chance

“Tourist season.”

“Fishingseason. Tourists aren’t here until mid-June. Climbers earlier, but they’re here with the purpose of Denali, so . . .”

“Right.” Flynn stepped back from the board. “And given the river location, the killer might know the Copper River.”

“This is Bowie land here.” Shasta palmed the northern section. “But most of the victims were found in Remington land.”

“They could have been dumped in the river and swept downstream.”

“I guess.” Shasta stepped back, scanning the list of faces. “Wait, that’s Aven Mulligan.”

“The second official victim. She was fifteen and also an anomaly. She was swept downriver and found a month after she disappeared, dead by gunshot. .270 Winchester.”

“A deer gun.”

“That’s why we were looking at hunters.”

“It’s an open-range gun,” Shasta said. “It uses a scope and a bolt action, single-shot big-game rifle. For people who sit in a deer stand and wait. My dad has one that belonged to my grandfather. They’re a terrible gun to ward off a bear, so any hunter using that gun out of season is poaching.”

She turned her attention to a picture of Idaho that Flynn had downloaded from the arrest files in the department. “You should be looking at his clients.”

“You’d make a decent detective.”

She glanced at Flynn, grinned. “Investigative reporter.”

“Right.”

“Besides, my family has been in the area since the dawn of time. My brother Deke is the sheriff. And my brother Levi runs the pizza joint.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Five. Goodwin runs Denali Sports, and Winter is a pilot. And there’s me . . . Local investigative reporter, waitress, and front desk for the local sheriff department. And I know things.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that Starr Air ran a lot of flights for Idaho into the bush, and Winter might have a list of his clients.”

“Can you get it?”

“It’s on the family cloud. Which I have the password to.”

“You’re my new favorite person.”

Shasta looked at her, winked. “You’re not bad either, even if you are taking Axel off the market.”

Flynn shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“Really? I saw you guys snoggin’ behind the ranger building. That didn’t look like ‘we’ll see’ to me.”

Flynn’s eyes widened.

“Just saying, everyone in the beer tent was watching.”

Oh. Her face heated. Shasta grinned, then turned back to the map. “By the way, this whole area used to be Bowie land.” She put her hand over the Remington property. “Senator Bowie sold it to Ox when he first came here. I think he needed money for a campaign or something. Ox thought he might mine jade, I think, but then his gold claim hit big, so he focused on those operations.”

“Ox bought it from a Bowie?”

“Their families are connected. Ox’s wife and Wilson’s first wife were sisters.

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