The Sitka Situation

The woman pointed toward the spiral staircase. “The lighthouse room. Top floor.”

A man in a red parka stepped forward. “There’s no need to send everyone out. Some of us have reservations.”

Franci turned to him. “Sir, move away from the stairs.”

His mouth tightened. “I paid for that room.”

“And right now, I’m asking you to stand over there.”

The room fell quiet except for water ticking against the windows. Franci touched the radio at her shoulder.

“Dispatch, I need another unit and medical response. Possible deceased person. I’m entering the second floor.”

“Copy.”

She climbed. The staircase curved tightly around a central post, and every step groaned beneath her boots. Fog pressed against the tall windows, turning the outside world into a blank wall. Halfway up, a door opened.

A thin man in a flannel shirt appeared, his face pale beneath a gray beard.

“Officer,” he whispered. “I found him.”

“Stay there. Don’t touch anything.”

“I didn’t.”

“Your name?”

“Elias. I keep the place.”

“Step back from the door, Elias.”

He obeyed, but his eyes stayed fixed on the room behind him. Franci moved closer, flashlight raised. The door stood open six inches. A dark smear marked the brass knob.

“Who is inside?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said you found him.”

“I found the body. I didn’t know the man.”

Franci pushed the door open with the edge of her flashlight.

The room was round, tucked beneath the lighthouse lantern. A bed faced the curved windows. A man lay on the floor beside it, one arm bent beneath his chest. Blood had dried darkly at the back of his head. A chair had fallen near the writing desk, and a drawer hung open.

Franci stopped at the threshold.

The room smelled of wet wool, old wood, and something metallic. Her flashlight caught a small brass key near the body’s hand. She did not step over it.

“Elias, stay exactly where you are.”

“I will.”

“Did you move anything?”

“No.”

“Did you touch the victim?”

“I checked for a pulse.”

“With what hand?”

Elias stared at her. “My right.”

“Show me.”

He lifted it. His fingers shook.

Franci backed away from the doorway and spoke into her radio. “Dispatch, send detectives and crime-scene personnel. Possible blunt-force trauma. I have a contained room, but guests are downstairs and the building is occupied. Advise responding units to bring barrier tape.”

“Copy.”

She descended two steps and faced the lobby. “Everyone listen to me. This building is now a crime scene. No one leaves, no one goes upstairs, and no one touches a bag, coat, door, or piece of furniture.”

The man in the red parka scoffed. “You can’t keep paying guests trapped here.”

“I can until I know who was in that room and whether anyone is in danger.”

A young woman near the fireplace began to cry. Another guest lifted a phone.

Franci pointed at it. “Put that away.”

“I’m only calling my husband.”

“Call him from there. Do not photograph anything.”

The woman lowered the phone.

Franci moved through the lobby, checking the front door, the back hall, and the narrow kitchen beyond it. The B&B seemed built from too many passages stitched together: a service stair, a pantry door, a corridor leading toward the tower’s base. Every space held wet footprints. Some were fresh. Some had blurred into dark smudges beneath the fog-dampened boots of the guests.

“Where’s your guest register?” Franci asked Elias.

“Desk drawer. No - the office. I keep it in the office.”

“Show me.”

Elias led her through the kitchen. The office door was locked. He fumbled with a ring of keys, dropping them once onto the floor.

“Slow down,” Franci said.

“I’m trying.”

“Who has access to this office?”

“Me. The owner. Sometimes the cleaner.”

“Names.”

“The owner’s away in Juneau. The cleaner comes Tuesdays.”

“Today is Monday.”

“I know what day it is.”

The lock clicked. Elias opened the door.

The office was barely large enough for the desk inside. Papers covered the floor. An empty space on the shelf showed where a ledger had been removed. Franci crouched, careful not to touch the scattered pages.

“Where is the register?”

“It was right there.”

“Who took it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Elias.”

“I don’t know!”

His voice struck the walls and came back thinner.

A crash sounded above them.

Franci drew her weapon and looked toward the ceiling. The guests in the lobby shouted. Someone knocked over a chair.

“Stay here,” she ordered.

She ran for the stairs.

The top-floor hall was empty. Fog whitened the windows, and the old tower’s mechanism ticked somewhere above the ceiling. Franci reached the lighthouse room and found the door wider than before.

“Police,” she called. “Show me your hands.”

No answer.

She entered one step at a time. The body remained where it had fallen. The chair had shifted, though she could not tell whether it had been moved by the crash or by the vibration of her own arrival. On the bed, a blanket lay pulled back. A wet boot print marked the sheet.

Franci scanned the room. “Police!”

The bathroom door stood open. Empty.

A narrow hatch beside the bed led to the lantern stairs. She crossed to it, keeping her feet clear of the blood and the brass key. The hatch was ajar. Cold wind slipped through the opening.

She lifted the flashlight.

The iron stairs spiraled upward into fog.

Something scraped above.

Franci raised her weapon. “Come down slowly.”

A gull burst through the lantern housing and beat its wings against the glass. Franci flinched as feathers and dust spun through the beam. The bird found the open vent and vanished into the gray.

Below, Elias called her name.

She returned to the hall, angry at the tremor in her fingers. “Nobody’s here,” she said when she reached him.

“That’s what I told you.”

“You told me you found a body. You didn’t tell me the register was missing.”

“I forgot.”

“You forgot the one thing that tells me who rented this room?”

Elias looked toward the stairs. “The guest wasn’t checked in under his own name.”

Franci held his gaze. “How do you know?”

“Because the booking note was separate.”

“Where is it?”

He swallowed. “I don’t know.”

Behind them, a radio chirped from the lobby. A responding officer’s voice came through, followed by the slam of the front door. Relief loosened something in Franci’s chest, but it did not last.

Her phone vibrated.

The screen showed Tukk.

For a moment she only stared at his name. Their last conversation had ended with him standing on the dock in the rain, refusing to answer a simple question about where he had been. He had said she was treating him like a suspect. She had told him he was making it easy.

Now, beneath the lighthouse windows, with a dead man upstairs and missing paperwork downstairs, his call felt like a hand closing around her wrist.

She answered. “Tukk.”

“Franci.” His voice was rough with static and distance. “Are you at the lighthouse?”

Her spine stiffened. “How do you know that?”

“Someone called from the B&B. They said there’s a police scene.”

“Where are you?”

“On the harbor.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

A pause. Beneath his voice she heard an engine idling and the slap of water against a hull.

“I’m heading in,” he said.

“Don’t.”

“Franci - ”

“Do not come to the lighthouse. Stay on your boat and wait for an officer to meet you.”

“What happened?”

“You know what happened?”

The silence that followed was worse than an answer.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I’ll ask the questions when I see you.”

“You think I did this?”

She looked toward the staircase, toward the room where the dead man waited beneath the fogged glass. “I think your name is already in this building.”

The line went dead.

“Officer?”

Franci turned. A uniformed officer stood at the lobby entrance with a roll of barrier tape. Behind him, two paramedics waited in the doorway, their bags at their feet.

“Upstairs,” she said. “No one crosses the tape until the scene team arrives.”

The officer nodded and began sealing the stairs. Franci took a pair of gloves from his kit and pulled them on. She returned to the office, where Elias hovered in the doorway.

“Tell me about the booking note,” she said.

“I saw it yesterday.”

“Whose name?”

“I didn’t read it.”

“You saw it well enough to know it wasn’t the register.”

“It was a private note. The owner keeps them for special arrangements.”

“Where did you see it?”

“On the desk in the lighthouse room.”

Franci went still. “When?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“Who brought it?”

Elias looked down at the floor. “A man.”

“What man?”

“I only saw his back.”

“Describe him.”

“Tall. Dark jacket. Wet boots.”

“That describes half of Sitka.”

“He had a fishing cap.”

Franci’s stomach tightened. “What kind?”

“Blue. With a white anchor.”

Tukk wore one exactly like that.

She moved back toward the stairs. The tape snapped across the entrance, bright yellow against the dark wood. Upstairs, the crime-scene team would soon arrive, but the room was already changing in her mind. The wet boot on the bed. The missing register. Tukk’s call before anyone had told him the victim was dead.

At the base of the stairs, Franci stopped.

“Elias,” she said. “You’re coming with me.”

“Where?”

“To identify the victim’s room.”

He stared at her. “I already told you. The lighthouse room.”

“No. I want the booking.”

They climbed together. Franci kept her eyes on the floor, memorizing every mark without stepping on it. At the round room, she used a gloved hand to lift a loose sheet of paper from beneath the fallen desk drawer. The top edge was torn, but the handwriting remained clear.

Guest: Tukk Arrival: Sunday evening Room: Lantern

Franci read it twice.

The foghorn sounded below, long and mournful, as the officer sealed the final door.

She folded nothing, touched nothing more. She simply stood in the center of the lighthouse B&B, with Tukk’s name waiting beside the dead man’s room, and realized the scene she had come to secure had already secured her.

End of chapter one. 32 more chapters and about 66,408 words in the full book.