Chapter 4: A New Beginning

Roxie hadn't been to Anchorage since 2002 for fear of running into the bikers. The first stop was Darla's hairdresser, where Roxie had a cut and perm. This took up most of the morning, but when she was done, she would fit in at any mall or grocery store once she had some different clothes. That would be the next stop after lunch. With a new look, Roxie then went to State Police Headquarters. There she gave her deposition on the woman who was dumped the year before, and Clyde shooting Bugs. The next day she agreed to accompany the CIB Troopers to the gravesites.

The trip would also be to surrender the stolen snowmobiles and retrieve whatever belongings from the cabin that she wished. Darrell was also brought back to Anchorage to clean up and get a haircut. He was interrogated separately, but his account of the woman they found and Clyde's death and burial supported Roxie's. Not knowing any better, Darrell admitted to being intimate with Roxie.

This turn of events brought Roxie back to be questioned about abusing her son. That upset her greatly, but was not part of the deal. While Clyde was alive, he acted the part of Roxie's husband and Darrell's father. Roxie knew Darrell wasn't quite normal, and after Clyde died, he kidnapped a hiker and brought her home. Roxie made her son release the girl on the promise that she wouldn't go to the police. She did report the abduction, and they were again on the run.

Darrell then realized that his attempt at finding a mate caused the police to hunt them. While Roxie was chastising Darrell over kidnapping the girl, she had told him in exasperation that she had rather sleep with him herself than for him to snatch another girl. She had no idea that he remembered that part above the rest of his mother's lecture. Six weeks later he confronted her with her own statement. Darrell was nineteen at the time, which made him a consenting adult.

Capt. Clark suggested that Darrell and Roxie each undergo a psychological examination.

While Darrell didn't know of the societal taboo on incest, in his own mind he had simply taken his mother as his mate. For Roxie it was just a matter of doing what had to be done to survive, and keep him from abducting another girl. Darrell needed institutional help, and Roxie was convinced that this would be best for him if he were to be released into the mainstream populace.

Roxie was hired to be a Baggage Handler, and with her restored documents, would start the following Saturday evening. Darla gave her notice, and was hired for a position in Dispatch at the ASP with her computer experience. One day on break, the similarities in her case, and the woman that was exhumed beside Clyde hit home, and she finally broke down. She had indeed been lucky to survive.

Traces of ether were found in the woman's lungs that matched engine-starting fluid, and were determined to be the actual cause of death along with exposure and the resulting hypothermia. But for her extraordinary effort to not breathe when her abductor held his knife beneath her nose, she would have gotten the full dose sprayed up her nostrils, just as the petite brunette in the red skirt had. Sellers gave her two days off, during which time she clung to Tim like a small child. By the day she returned to work, Tim convinced Darla that she must have a guardian angel watching over her to have had so many things allow her to survive.

When the discovery of the body of the other woman hit the news, the man now going as Larry Duncan realized that the ASP was going to find Darla's body. The ASP realized just such an eventuality, and decided that a change of identity for Darla Reynolds was in order. Clark assigned Tim to create a new identity for her, and that night he made the decision that would change their lives.

"Darla," he said over dinner that night, "how would you like to make this living arrangement more permanent?"

"Tim," she replied, "I think I am comfortable with it. So much so in fact that I feel very safe with you. If it didn't just feel too right, I would consider marrying you some day."

"What do you mean 'too right'?" asked Tim.

"Sort of like, 'fairy tale, dream come true' right," Darla answered. "You have been a perfect gentleman, given me my space to deal with my rape, held and protected me when I fell apart. You obviously care for me and are a special person. You are special to me, Tim. Would you even consider being my husband? I won't mind if you want more time to answer."

Tim was stunned. He was working his way up to asking Darla to marry him. Now she had turned the tables on him.

"I don't need more time," he replied. "I was trying to ask you the same thing. It would simplify getting you a new identity, and well, it would make me very happy. I just spent most of my savings to start that reward fund for you that we are setting up Roxie's new life with. I wanted to buy you an engagement ring and do things right."

"She has had a hard life, Tim," Darla noted. "I don't know too many people whose marital success depended on the engagement ring. We should have a quiet wedding though. Then we should stage a funeral for me to see if the SOB shows up."

"I thought you didn't see his face," remarked Tim.

"I didn't," Darla answered, "but it stands to reason that he will also be at the other girl's funeral tomorrow. All you need to do is to see who would be at both. I don't want him thinking I am still alive."

"I'll let the Captain know tomorrow," Tim said. "He can suggest a way to keep our marriage low-key, and just how to set up the funeral too. Don't forget that the men he was partnered with on the Cessna can identify him. We can arrest him on their ID and compel a DNA sample."

The assumed Larry Duncan had indeed heard of the discovery of both bodies, but in spite of the other pilots' presence, nobody resembling him attended the first funeral. Perhaps Duncan wasn't going to be that predictable. For the time being, he had shacked up with a widow from Nikolai, and was letting things cool off in Anchorage. When they needed supplies, they simply purchased whatever was available in the village.

Then again, the weather for flying the small Super Cub had not been the best. He knew the two women were dead. He had made certain of it. The most recent victim couldn't identify him since she had not gotten a good look at his face. She would have recalled the beard, which no longer adorned his face. The fact that they now had his plane, with its DNA evidence unnerved Duncan. As long as he stayed in the bush, the ASP would most likely never find him.

Darla and Tim were married on February 14, and from that point on, Darla became Marie Sealy. The search for Duncan would be ongoing, but they were watching the airports, and the highways. Meanwhile the body of a teenage girl was found on the 19^th, and focus shifted to that case. It was unconnected, and that was apparent from the start. This one was found in a movie theater, strangled and raped during a horror film, and left on the floor between the seats. The Anchorage PD was handling that case.

The strangulation pointed to a different killer. Still Darla, now Marie Sealy had her hair color lightened and cut differently. A car was found parked in the same spot for several days at the Willow Airport the following day, and was traced to the previous owner, who insisted that he sold it to a man named Duncan. Fearing foul play the ASP dusted for fingerprints and found the same prints that belonged to the serial rapist and killer.

It was now apparent that Duncan had escaped by air with another plane. It would take several days with the new snow, to get an accurate description of the Super Cub. Given the plane's relatively short range before refueling, the troopers could calculate a radius around Willow, where he had to stop.

Late February brought an influx of small aircraft to the Nikolai Airport and Duncan began to get nervous. They were the vanguard of the "Iditarod Air Force", a virtual armada of small planes bringing in gear and supplies for the mushers on the Iditarod Dog Sled Race just days away. Duncan knew just how big an event the Iditarod was, and how many people would be there during the race. Suddenly, Nikolai wasn't where he could hide for very long, and he refueled the plane and set off for another place to hide out for a few weeks.

He spotted an abandoned cabin east of the Parks highway and landed on a frozen riverbed next to it. The cabin looked as though nobody had been there in years, and had many cracks where the snow blew through the walls. Those he could patch with snow until spring, and then use mud. In a few weeks he could head into a village for more supplies, but with the ASP on his heels, he had best stay out of sight.

Perhaps once the Iditarod began, he could sneak back into Canada, but he was also wanted there under his real name. He had filed a flight plan from Nikolai to Fairbanks, but never made the trip, using it only as a diversion, in case the authorities traced him there. The assumption would be that the plane had crashed in the mountains south of Denali Park. In fact, come spring, he would burn the plane and take the Grumman aluminum canoe down the river to a populated area.

He hadn't counted on the chain of events that brought things together to have the ASP close in on him so quickly. Yet, he and only he knew where he was at the moment. He trampled and shoveled a path to taxi the plane away from the riverbed and into the trees where it wouldn't be spotted from the air. There was a moose near the cabin and Duncan killed it just before dark with a rifle from the plane. Now he would have meat for several weeks anyway if the wolves didn't find it overnight before he could butcher it.

Of course hiding out, Duncan was nowhere near the funerals for the two victims. In reality, Yvonne Morgan was sent back to her home in Portland, Oregon, and they were both staged at considerable cost to the ASP with no results. Visits by the ASP to the sites along the Iditarod Trail did net a man wanted in a bank robbery in Nome the previous October.

A storekeeper in Nikolai recognized him from a photo that officers from McGrath showed him as "Larry" who stocked up several days before and was flying to Fairbanks, he was told. The flight plan when looked into was filed under the name of Larry Young with fictitious information, and never reached its destination. It was not unusual for a small plane like the Super Cub to go down in bad weather during the Alaskan winter, and a two-day search revealed only a plane missing since 1997. This derailed the search for the criminal as it turned into a salvage operation.

Back in Anchorage, Darla, now Marie Sealy and Tim began their life as a couple. She would have to get used to being a non-working housewife, but that suited her quite well. Tim was working on a child abduction case that happened in Chugach State Park on March 2. Every so often Roxie would invite Marie out to lunch at the Old Sourdough Mining Company restaurant where she was now a hostess. Dressed in her "sourdough" attire, she fit the part of an old miner too well not to be hired for the job. Darrell was working at Airport Maintenance and taking classes for his GED.

Often the two women discussed the "man eater" as Roxie called Hillary, his new girlfriend. Hillary Jameson was just not the sort of woman a mother wants her son to be falling for. As the women watched the Iditarod update on the news, Roxie asked Marie to have Tim check her out. Darrell was no prize, even cleaned up with new clothes he was still a loser, and Hillary was an attractive woman that would have little trouble snaring almost any man she wanted.

"Darla, I mean Marie," Roxie began, "what if she is trying to recruit him for some sort of criminal activity?"

"I think you're just being the typical over protective mother Roxie," Marie opined.

"No, Marie," Roxie argued, "You should see her. She lets him feel her up right in front of me. It is almost as if she were daring me to say something. Darrell won't listen to me because she has him 'whipped.' Last night she told me I was just jealous because he didn't want me anymore now that he knew what a real woman was like."

"That was mean," replied Marie. "Give me what you know about her, and I'll ask Tim to run a background check on her if he can."

The manager walked by their table, looked at his watch then at Roxie. Roxie said, "Lunch break must be up. I'll call you tonight."

"Okay, Tim will be there and I'll tell him what you said," Marie replied. "Thanks for the recommendation on lunch. It was great."