A Grave Denied Part 11

Her lips compressed into a thin line. She raised her head and stared out the window. The brute bulk of the Quilak Mountains squatted like chained beasts against a steadily lightening eastern horizon, ready to attack on command.

Kate liked lists. She liked tackling a list in the morning, and enjoyed the warm sense of accomplishment she got at the end of the day when most or even all of the items on it had been crossed off. Undone tasks at the end of the day got added to another list, and the previous list sat on the table for a few days longer, silent testimony to its compiler's industry and efficiency.

This list was different. This list was a ruthless, relentless compilation of facts and series of tasks that could lead to only one outcome. Anger was a great motivator, and Kate wasn't just angry, she was enraged. Her eyes dropped from the mountains to the awkward, adolescent lump on the opposite couch that was Johnny Morgan, his face barely visible, eyes screwed shut, mouth open, one arm twisted beneath him and one leg hanging over the side of the couch to the floor.

Someone had burned down her cabin, her home, all her belongings, her clothes, her music. Her books.

But all that was only by-product. Someone had snuck up to her house in the middle of the night with intent to commit murder, and it wasn't their fault that they hadn't been successful twice over.

Johnny snorted and s.h.i.+fted into another impossible position. People had made attempts on her life before. It came with the territory. Stick your nose into someone else's business, especially in Alaska, where maintaining one's privacy came somewhere between a vocation and a religion, you ran the danger of getting that nose lopped off. It was an acceptable risk, but it was a risk of which she was always aware and one she had been willing to take for the sake of the greater good.

But this time, Johnny had been put at risk. Her eyes narrowed. Putting a child's life in danger was not allowed. Someone must be brought to a realization of the error of his ways. Someone must be swiftly and surely punished for it, punished so severely that they knew just how badly they had transgressed, punished so memorably that no one else ever got the idea they could behave the same way.

But first she had to find them. She bent her head back over her task, and not even the creak of bedsprings and the whisper of wheelchair tires distracted her.

The long black arm reaching around and s.n.a.t.c.hing the notepad out of her hands did. Bobby, face like a thundercloud, rifled through the pages and tossed the notepad back in her lap. "Somebody already tried to kill you once," he said in a furious whisper that had Johnny stirring. "You gonna keep at this until they get the job done?"

Kate picked up the notepad and shook the pages into place without replying.

"Jim fired you off this case, Kate. I heard him. Dinah heard him, Johnny heard him, I think the whole f.u.c.king Park might have heard him. He's not going to be happy when he hears you didn't stay fired."

Kate looked him straight in the eye and said calmly, "I find who killed Dreyer, I find who burned down my cabin. You really think I'm going to bother telling Jim when I do?"

She turned back to the list, and Bobby, recognizing a hopeless cause, returned to bed. He lay awake a long time, listening to the scratching of pencil on paper, and didn't sleep until the light in the living room clicked off.

Dawn came far too early for everyone.

8.

Dr. Millicent Nebeker McClanahan ignored Kate to focus on Johnny. "Yes?" she said encouragingly. It was the next morning. They were up on the Step, a narrow ledge between valley and plateau that supported a cl.u.s.ter of prefabricated buildings and a skinny airstrip that stood in constant danger of either sliding over the side or being overrun by mountain hemlock. This was Park headquarters for the U.S. Park Service, and they were just down the hall of the man who ran it and who was standing next to Kate at respectful attention. Dan O'Brian was a boyish-faced, burly man with bristly red hair and blue eyes so innocent they aroused instant suspicion in those meeting him for the first time.

"Don't bat those baby blues at me, young man," Dr. McClanahan told him.

Dan, somewhere in his late forties, said meekly, "No, ma'am."

"I know every thought that's going on in that intellectually challenged pea-sized organ you call a brain," Dr. McClanahan said, not without relish, "and there isn't a one of them worth repeating."

"Yes, ma'am." Dan had the temerity to grin at her.

She laughed. "I see you're listening as hard as you always do." She turned back to Johnny. "Well?"

Dr. Millicent Nebeker McClanahan was five-eleven, maybe 130 pounds, with short, thick white hair indifferently cut, and large gray eyes. She wore jeans, a white turtleneck beneath a ratty fleece pullover that had once been dark green, no makeup, and no jewelry except for small plain gold hoop earrings and the worn gold band on the fourth finger of her right hand. She was constantly in motion even when she was standing still, tucking hair behind an ear, tugging on her earlobe, stuffing her hands in her pockets, taking them out again, fiddling with her collar, s.h.i.+fting from one foot to the other as if impatient to be on the move. She didn't quite give off sparks, but one imagined she might if any attempt was made to restrain her.

She was a geologist specializing in glaciers, and by good or ill fortune was currently headquartering on the Step as she completed a study for which, Dan informed Kate in a low voice, she seemed to have unlimited funding because she gave every indication of settling in for the summer, and Dan had been instructed by his masters in D.C. to give her every a.s.sistance.

The thing was, Johnny was seriously into it. He hung on every word that fell from Dr. McClanahan's lips. He followed her forefinger intently as it traced a line of glacial moraines on a map. He asked questions. He should have been in school but had insisted on accompanying Kate to the Step, a place in the Park he had yet to visit, and now Kate was glad she had acquiesced.

Dr. McClanahan answered him sensibly, as one equal to another, with no hint of "Run away and play, little boy" in her manner. She was currently describing the state of glaciers in general globally and in Alaska in particular, and Johnny said, "That's why we're here, Dr. McClanahan, we-"

She smiled and said, "Why don't you just call me Millicent, Johnny."

He flushed with pleasure. "Sure. Millicent." He stumbled a little over the p.r.o.nunciation.

She laughed. "See if Millie works better."

He grinned. "Okay, Millie. Anyway, like I was saying, that's why we're here. We need to talk to someone who knows about Grant Glacier."

"Grant Glacier, hmmmm." Dr. McClanahan tilted her head to examine the map through the half-gla.s.ses perched at the tip of her long thin nose. The map covered most of one wall of the conference room and it was a large room. It was done to a 1/ 50,000 scale and detailed down to the shallowest bend of the smallest creek. Kate located her creek without difficulty, only to be reminded of the ruin on its bank. She wrenched her attention back to Dr. McClanahan, who was pointing at tongues of white on the map and naming them off one at a time. "Was.h.i.+ngton, Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, here we are, Grant Glacier. Hmmm, yes. That was the glacier that thrust forward last summer, wasn't it?"

She tossed the question over her shoulder at Dan, and Dan snapped to attention. "Ma'am, yes, ma'am."

She grinned. "Do you keep a personal log of Park events?"

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am." He escorted them back to the cubbyhole that was his office and selected from a shelf a daily diary the twin of Bobby's. He paged through it. "Here we are," he said. "Suddenly, last summer, on June twenty-eighth to be exact, Grant Glacier was noticed to be going the wrong way."

Dr. McClanahan's nose twitched. "Any seismic activity in the area prior to the event?"

Dan paged back. "I don't think-oh, wait a minute. Yeah, there was a shaker that week. But-"

"What?"

"Well, it was four days before. And it was just a baby, five point two according to the Tsunami Warning Center."

Dr. McClanahan's nose twitched again. "Hmmm."

Dan waited. When she made no further noise he said, "Hmmm what?"

"We've discussed my paper," she said.

"You've discussed your paper," he said, "I've just been towed unwillingly in the wake of your fanaticism."

"Nicely put," she said, complimentarily. "However, enthusiasm would be a more apt description."

"I was actually thinking zealotry," he said dryly.

They laughed, and it occurred to Kate that Dan's social life had been settled on for this summer. She cleared her throat. "So who reported it?"

Dan looked at her, startled, as if only now remembering she was in the room, and his ears got red. "Who," he muttered, looking back at the diary, "right. Um, yeah." He flipped back and forth. "Okay. A bunch of ice climbers were on a three-week camping trip up the valley. I think a couple of them were actually on the glacier with axes and pitons when it started moving forward. Scared the h.e.l.l out of them, especially as they were camped out on the edge of the lake at the mouth. They said it sounded like the world was coming apart beneath their feet." He showed them the quote. "Anyway, they got the h.e.l.l off the glacier, struck camp, and headed for Niniltna. George dropped in on his way home from flying them back to Anchorage."

"When did it go back into recession?" Dr. McClanahan said.

"I don't know the exact date," Dan said, and at least appeared crushed when Dr. McClanahan looked disappointed. "I checked on it as often as I could, and I alerted the geologists at the University of Alaska, but no one was all that interested. It wasn't like when Hubbard thrust forward. Tidewater glaciers are more interesting than piedmont, I guess. The Grant wasn't cutting off any seals from the open ocean. And let's face it, the Grant is pretty small potatoes compared to the Hubbard."

Dr. McClanahan nodded. "And it's not like watching glaciers is your only job."

"I got George to drop a flag on the face and mark the position on his GPS. Whenever he had a paying pa.s.senger for Tok, he'd do a flyover and take a bearing on the flag."

"Oh, excellent!" Dr. McClanahan said.

"When did he report it was going into recession again?" Kate said, losing patience.

"Oh." Dan's ears got red again and he dove back into the diary. "Uh, yeah, here it is. He first told me it looked like it had started back in late September. Could have been moving slow enough that he didn't notice it until then."

"How far did the flag move down altogether?" Johnny said, and earned an approving smile from Dr. McClanahan.

"From the time he dropped it until the first snowfall when he couldn't find it again, down over five thousand feet."

"Going on a mile," Johnny said, awed.

"Don't forget, last September was pretty warm. A lot of that was melt off."

"Did you tell anyone that it had started receding again?" Kate said.

Dan shrugged. "Like I said. After the initial excitement, people weren't that interested. I kept track in the diary until the snow covered up the flag and George couldn't take any more readings."

So no one would have known that the glacier wasn't still moving forward, Kate thought. And someone who wasn't glacier ept might have thought the mouth of a glacier a great place to hide a body for a long, long time.

"Let's take a look," Dr. McClanahan said.

"She needs to be studying something that moves faster than a glacier," Kate said, panting.

Johnny was too winded even to nod.

Dr. Millicent Nebeker McClanahan bounded up to the mouth of Grant Glacier like a mountain goat, no hands, hopping nimbly from berg to berg. Her voice floated behind her as Kate and Johnny tried to keep up. "You want to be careful near the mouth of a glacier, especially at this time of year. The face may calve at any moment as soon as it begins to warm up and the insulating layer of winter snow melts off."

Kate looked up at the wall of ice in front of which they were currently standing. "Johnny, maybe you better go back to the truck." That was where Dan had stayed, to lean against the grille and watch them through binoculars, the grin on his face visible even from this distance.

Johnny shook his head. "She's here, and besides, it calved when we were here the other day," he said, and went after his new hero.

"It what?" Kate said, staring after him.

"What's the matter, Shugak, can't keep up?" Dan yelled.

Kate promised retribution with a look and heard him laughing. She followed Johnny, and she did use her hands. By the time she got there, McClanahan and Johnny had vanished inside the mouth. "Johnny, d.a.m.n it," she said through clenched teeth, and went after him.

It was dark and cold in the ice cave, and noisy with dripping, trickling, running, and rus.h.i.+ng water. It felt like being inside a frozen waterfall that was going to melt away completely at any moment. The tall figure of the geologist and the smaller figure of the boy were standing in the center of the sloping floor of the long narrow cave, following the beam from the flashlight the geologist held as it played over the ice. It wasn't clear or even white, but dark with the debris it had picked up on its millennial journey down the mountain.

The gravel crunching beneath her feet had been crushed and rolled to a smooth uniform size. Kate tried not to think about the same thing happening to her. "Is this a good idea, Millie?" she said.

"Probably not," Millie said, not moving.

Kate repressed an urge to get the h.e.l.l out of there. She would not be outdone in foolhardiness, even if it meant dying in the collapse of a glacier.

"Where was the body?" Millie asked Johnny.

He walked to where the ice left the gravel and began to curve overhead. "Right here."

"Right in the middle," Millie said. She knelt down and examined the ice directly behind the spot Johnny indicated in excruciatingly minute detail. Kate tried not to s.h.i.+ft from foot to foot. Catching who killed Len Dreyer and burned down her cabin seemed suddenly less compelling.

"The body was upright?"

"Uh-huh."

"With his back to the wall?"

"Uh-huh." Johnny's voice sounded tinny against the surrounding ice.

"Hmmm, yes," McClanahan said, peering and prodding at the ice. "Yes, well, I think that's all we're going to find here."

She got to her feet and clicked off the flashlight. Stygian gloom fell like a blow. Kate wasn't especially claustrophobic and even liked the dark, but when she felt rather than saw McClanahan brush by she nearly levitated off the ground. She waited until they were up the slope of gravel and back out into the suns.h.i.+ne before she trusted her voice enough to ask, "What did we find there?"

McClanahan propped one foot on a chunk of ice, clasped her hands on her knee, and frowned down at them. "It's the first week of May. From anecdotal reports we know that the glacier stopped thrusting forward in September of last year. My guess would be that the cave has not altered in any substantial way since last fall. The winter temperatures and the insulating layer of winter snowfall would have maintained the interior surface of the cave. Further." Very much the learned lecturer condensing specialized information for consumption by an amateur audience, she held up one finger to forestall Kate's comment. "Had the body been placed there this spring, the difference in temperature between the ice and the body would inevitably have left some mark."

"An outline?" Johnny said.

Kate, remembering the sound of melting water that had surrounded her in the cave, said, "It wouldn't have melted?"

McClanahan considered this. "Given the difference in temperature between solid ice and human flesh, no matter how dead, and with the temperature outside the cave steadily rising, I believe I would have been able to detect some mark. If, on the other hand, the body had been placed there late last fall, with temperatures already falling steadily, perhaps also with the body already chilled itself, very little impression would have been left, easily erased during spring melt off."

"So, bottom line," Kate said. "Was the body placed there last fall or this spring?"

"One cannot say for sure," McClanahan said. "Or at least this one can't. But my best guess would be earlier than this spring. Well before breakup, let's say. How deep was last winter's snowfall?"

"Why?"

"How long would it take given this spring's ambient temperatures to melt that much snow, so that the cave would be revealed and someone could deposit a body inside it?"

Kate looked back at the open slash of the cave mouth at the foot of the wide, dirty wall of ice, and had an unwelcome vision of the body of Len Dreyer propped up against the back of the ice cave, sightless eyes staring toward the snow-filled entrance, waiting out the winter until spring and Johnny's cla.s.s came to find him. "So, last fall," she said.

"It's only a guess," Millie said, "but I'd say yes."

Plus, so far no one reported seeing Dreyer after October, Kate thought. Bobby might have been the last one to see him alive.

"What's your paper going to be about, Millie?" Johnny said.

" 'The Effect of Seismic Events and Meteorological Transformation on Glacial Geomorphology in Interior Alaska,"" McClanahan replied promptly.

Johnny gulped. "What does that mean?"

"You know about earthquake faults?"

"Sure. Everybody in Alaska knows about earthquake faults."