ROY VARNI CREATES MURDER THRILLER USING LOCAL PERSONALITIES

Long before there was a three-mile road to the upper powerhouse near Salmon Creek Dam, there were 876 steps followed by a precipitous path along a 6-foot-wide flume more than 20 feet above the ground.

Juneau resident Roy Varni, 79, remembers the hike well. He and his family spent a year in 1971 and 1972 helping operate the Upper Salmon Creek powerhouse for Juneau Hydroelectric.

Varni has turned the memories into his first book, the murder-mystery, “It Rains Murder Sometimes in Juneau .” All the characters are Juneau personalities, but their names have been changed.

“If it were up to me, I’d still be up there,” Varni said. “It was a great, tranquil place to live.”

Varni was inspired to write a book by the Billy Wilson poem, “It Rains Sometimes in Juneau .” He includes it at the beginning of the novel.

Tired of traffic, overpopulation, and looking for a new adventure, Varni and his family moved to Juneau from Sunnyvale , Calif. , in the San Francisco Bay area, in 1970. They bought a house in the Mendenhall Valley , and Varni soon found the job – 10 days on, four days off – at Salmon Creek.

The Salmon Creek powerhouse was completed in 1914. In Varni’s day, it was run by Juneau Hydroelectric, a division of the Alaska-Juneau Gold Mining Co. Helicopters flew food, furniture and supplies into the powerhouse area.

The powerhouse operators would park in a lot just off Glacier Highway , then walk up 876 steps to a penstock, which controlled water flow. It was another two-plus miles, along a rail-less flume to the living quarters. The operators would usually travel by motorbike.

Varni and his son, Andrew, fell off the flume a few times but were never hurt. Varni had the least seniority of the operators and would often have to climb up to the dam to monitor the water level.

“That last eighth of a mile was a bear,” Varni said. “Going up there in the winter, it was almost hand over hand to get up there with all that snow on the trail.”

The fishing was one of the many benefits. Trout would often flow out of the dam and into the creek. Back then, the limit was 30.

“When people would come walking along the trail, they’d stop in the powerhouse and say, ‘How’s the fishing in the stream?’” Varni said. “We’d say, ‘Not too good, just up at the dam.’ That way we kept the fishing to ourselves.”

Alaska Electric Light & Power took over in 1972 and consolidated positions. Varni had the least seniority and was laid off, he said. The helicopters transported the family’s furniture back down the hill.

“When our furniture came down, my wife looked up at it and said, ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Roy . I’ll never let them take my furniture back up there again. Not in that net.”

Two weeks later, AEL&P phoned Varni and invited him to return to his job at Upper Salmon. But he had already started with Joe Shaw Realty, a company he took over from Shaw in the early 1980s.

The Varnis eventually retired and moved to Mesa , Ariz. They came back to Juneau in 2000. Two daughters still live in town. Sharon Perkins runs the Best Western Grandma’s Feather Bed, and Pam Varni is the Executive Director of the Legislative Affairs Agency.

Early in the first few pages the author leads the reader to suspect, as does the investigating officer, that there is more involved here than a simple accidental shooting.  As the story unfolds, the perpetrator and his evil intent is revealed.  Then, beginning at Chapter 13, every intricate detail in the man’s actual planning of the perfect murder begins to be laid out …….

THIRTEEN 

BEGINNING OF THE PLAN  

         “My plan must be perfect,” Rex said to himself.  “So, the first thing I need is a checklist.  But, since it will be lengthy, it needs to be on paper.  There’s no way I can possibly remember it all in my head.  Where can I keep it to prevent someone accidentally finding it?  It needs to be somewhere close so I can add or delete when necessary but still be completely hidden.  In fact, it really needs to always be within easy reach so it will be available to me when I am at work, in the house, or walking in the woods or in town.  Where can I possibly hide it?” he mused.

  His plan had not even begun to take shape except for the actual intent.  The checklist had not even been started and already he was stumped.  It took a few more days before the answer finally came to him.  He was getting into his jeans preparing to head across the flume to the powerhouse for his day shift. As he slipped the wide western style leather belt into the loops of his jeans, an idea came to him.

        Later, when his shift ended at 4:00 p.m., he didn’t immediately walk out the door as was his usual.  Instead, he stopped for a minute to talk shop with his relief and to express the thought that today because it was so unusually sunny and warm he would go to town for dinner with the missus.  Once out the door, however, he lost no time climbing aboard his motorized bike and racing off down the flume.  If the door to the powerhouse had been open his relief might have seen Rex tearing down the straightaway on his bike and wondered why he was in such a rush.  Instead, no one noticed.  No one else was around. Upon reaching the penstock he closeted the bike and hurried down the steps to Lower Salmon and his parked car.  In town he left the car more than two blocks from his intended destination and began walking toward the only shoe repair shop probably in all of Southeast Alaska.   As he turned off Seward onto Second Street he was pleased to see that the shop was still open and the owner was its only occupant.

  “Can you sew a strip of thin leather about 9 or 10 inches long to the inside of this belt leaving both ends open so I can slip paper money in there when I travel?  Last time I was in Mexico some guy picked my pocket while I was in a crowd and got away with my wallet, all my money and airline tickets plus my I.D.”  The cobbler assured him that the task was not a difficult one, that it was a great idea, and that he could have it for him by the next evening.

  The first part of Rex’s plan was now underway and all of it, from the plant to the parking lot, to the shoe repair shop, was done with not even the slightest suspicions being aroused.  Now he could add or delete items on his checklist and it would always be in his possession.  It would not be subject to being seen accidentally or otherwise.  Soon, the checklist started to take shape.

  The first item listed which needed no further written explanation simply said ‘AROUSE NO SUSPICION.’  He had already done that and would continue to do it to nth degree.  The next few items and those following changed from day to day and from sequence to sequence depending on new or discarded ideas.  Among them, for instance, the item: ‘SELECT WEAPON’ had beneath it the sub-headings: ‘a – my rifle’ and ‘b – other.’  Under those were other items such as ‘BUILD CONTRAPTION’ and ‘REPORT RIFLE STOLEN.’

  He saw early on that the checklist needed to be written in pencil so that any corrections could easily be done with a rubber eraser.  If a listed item was already accomplished it could be circled.  In this way there would be no need to destroy the list or to worry that a copy of it had been lost somewhere.  The one and only copy would always remain with him, safely tucked into his belt around his waist. Rex decided that the deed would be done with his own rifle and that the subject firearm should be reported to the police as stolen.  This he would do some time during the weeks before Mary’s ‘unfortunate accident.’  In order to completely discourage any thought of his culpability, a rifle must be shown as having shot him, too, and all with the same bullet that killed Mary.  If he could accomplish that tricky feat it would be the ultimate, the clincher, and further proof that he was in no way involved in the shooting.

 So, after circling the part about whose rifle, he went down the list to the how, when, and where to fire it.  At the bottom of the list he added the words ‘INCRIMINATE ALOYSIUS’ in extra large letters.  He had a special hate for the man and he meant for him to suffer someday, somehow.  He would figure that out later.

        If Rex were to use an accomplice to kill Mary it would be much easier but considerably more risky.  Secrets in the planning of a crime, as are secrets after the fact, are hard to keep even for a lone plotter.  He would need to do it himself alone with no help from anyone and without anyone’s knowledge.  If he were to attempt to physically handle the weapon as it fired there could be incriminating powder residue on him and his clothing.  He had to do it but without any contact with the weapon itself.  He would need to devise something that would accomplish the job and it would have to be foolproof.  He worked on this thought long and hard.  One day it came to him.  Soon thereafter he started work on his ‘contraption.’

  Early in his planning, Rex had envisioned simply pushing Mary off the flume during one of their leisurely walks into or out of Upper Salmon, but that would be too obvious and suspicious for one and not certain for the other.  She might survive a fall into even the deepest of gullies, and that would result in failure of the plan and possibly many years in jail for him.  No, if he could execute the current plan without a flaw it would be foolproof, as would be his alibi.  In fact, he wouldn’t even need an alibi since he would be a victim, too. So, for the next few weeks he searched the mountainsides above the flume for just the right spot, with the right vantage point and with enough foliage cover and with just the right tree or trees where he could securely attach his contraption of death.  After much searching he found the ideal place in an area where the flume rounded a promontory, ducked into a short indentation in the mountain, curled around still another promontory, and then continued on toward the powerhouse on a fairly long straightaway. It was in an area very similar to where years before Boyd Hendricks had visited with two bear cubs and their mother.  This spot that Rex found was,  instead, near post #32 and adjacent to a storage platform.  Not more than 50 yards above the flume he found his ideal spot from which to fire that special bullet.