A grave denied (11 page)

“Not unless the killer was the dumbest person who ever lived. All glaciers are receding. It’s a geologic fact. I think I learned it from Mr. Kaufman in sixth-grade science.”

“But according to what Ms. Doogan was telling us, last year Grant Glacier thrust forward.”

“What?”

“She told us it pushed forward last year, I think a couple of hundred feet.”

“But what about all glaciers being in recession?” Kate said, feeling cheated. Mr. Kaufman, a strict disciplinarian with no sense of humor, had let her down.

“They are, mostly. Except sometimes, one isn’t. You heard about Hubbard Glacier?”

Kate’s brows knit, then cleared. “Oh yeah, Yakutat Bay. The glacier closed off the neck of some fjord.”

“Russell.”

“Whatever.” Kate grinned. “I remember now, I read about it.” Jack Baird’s air taxi in Bering fell heir to newspapers carried by passengers on their way from Anchorage into the Y-K delta. As holed up as she had been the previous summer, she couldn’t help but notice some of the headlines. “The greenies were all bent out of shape because a bunch of, what, seals got caught behind the ice, and the Tlingits in Yakutat were saying, ”Not a problem, the freezer’s a little empty anyway.“ ”

Johnny grinned. “Really?”

“Really. So why did Grant Glacier thrust forward?”

“No one knows why it happens. Last year all of a sudden Grant pushed forward, right over the top of Grant Lake, you know the lake at the edge of the glacier? Ms. Doogan said you couldn’t hardly see the lake at all.”

“When did it move forward?” Kate said.

“July.” Johnny thought. “The first week of July? I don’t know the exact date.”

“Dan O’Brian would,” Kate said. “When did it move back?”

“When did the glacier start receding again, you mean?” Johnny said. “I don’t remember.”

“Dan would know that, too,” Kate said.

Johnny said, “You think whoever killed Len Dreyer put the body in front of an advancing glacier? Thinking maybe it was the super-duper deep freeze, that nobody’d ever find it?”

Kate shrugged. “It’s a theory. A crevasse somewhere up on the surface would be better, but I’d guess humping the body of a full-grown man up on top of a glacier, no matter how small that glacier is, wouldn’t be all that easy. Or exactly inconspicuous. How big a deal was it when the glacier jumped forward? Did everybody know about it? Did people in the Park go up to gawk?”

“I don’t know.” Johnny was quick, though. “You’re thinking they did, that everybody knew and went up there. So whoever shoved the body in front of it, maybe he was thinking the glacier would keep coming forward. If he thought that, he must have done it at the same time it actually was moving forward.”

“And you’re thinking that puts a date on when the body was left there,” Kate said.

“Why not?” Johnny said, his eyes wide and excited.

“And you’re also thinking that the murderer wouldn’t have waited too long after he or she had killed Dreyer to dispose of the body.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what you’re saying is, we could narrow down the time of death if we looked up the dates the glacier was moving forward.”

“It wouldn’t be exact,” Johnny said, frowning. “It moved forward for a while. Weeks, I think. Maybe even months.”

“But it’s a place to start.” Kate sipped more coffee. “Not bad, Morgan. We’ll make a detective of you yet.”

He grinned, looking very young in the reflected glows of the setting sun and the campfire. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She was sorry to erase the grin from his face but there was no helping it. “So how long were you thinking of staying up here?”

And there went the grin, to be replaced by a straight, stubborn line with a chin very much in evidence. “As long as it takes.”

Kate nodded. “I see. Well, you’ll be eighteen in four years and no longer a minor, at which time you can tell your mother to take a hike.” She looked around at his camp. “I guess you could stay up here that long.”

He looked annoyed. “I won’t be up here for four years. I just have to hide out long enough for her to get bored and leave me alone.”

Kate laughed a little, and held up a hand when she saw his expression change again. “I’m not laughing at you, Johnny. But I have to say that one thing you inherited from your mother is a whole lot of stubborn. You never let anything go.” She leaned forward. “Johnny, neither does she. For whatever reason, she hates my guts, and the thought of you living with me just fries her to a crisp.”

“She thinks you broke her and Dad up.”

“I didn’t.”

“I know that. She and Dad were way over when he brought you home that first time. You didn’t have anything to do with them. I know that, Kate. I don’t know why she doesn’t know it, too.”

They contemplated the fire together in silence for a moment. “She’s not a monster, Johnny,” Kate said. “She’s a human being. She’s got the same amount of human failings as the rest of us.” And maybe a few more, she thought but didn’t say. “I think so long as your dad wasn’t with somebody else that she was fine.”

“You mean she didn’t want him back until somebody else had him? But that’s so dumb!”

“Maybe. It’s human, though.” She looked at Johnny and smiled. “And I have to tell you, your father wasn’t exactly unattractive to women. Maybe it was like the song says. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. It doesn’t really matter. She doesn’t want you with me.”

“But I want to be here!”

“That just rubs salt into the wound, Johnny. You’re her son, her underage son, I might point out, and you’re telling her you’re going to live where you want to live. That would be enough all by itself to activate the parental authority reflex, but you’re also choosing to live with her sworn enemy. Of course she’s determined to get you back. I’d expect that reaction from any parent.”

“She’s no parent,” he said hotly. “She doesn’t care about what’s best for me, she never cared. I was just something to fight over with Dad. I was like… like… I was like Dad’s allowance.”

“Allowance?”

“Yeah, allowance. If I did all my chores at Dad’s, he’d give me my allowance. If he did everything she wanted him to, he got me.” He ducked his head, and his voice dropped to a mutter. “I heard them fighting about it one night, late, back when I was a kid. They thought I was asleep. She’d been out and she’d dropped me off at his house, and when she came to get me he wanted to know where she’d been and why she didn’t call if she knew she was going to be so late. She started yelling at him, saying she’d given him the kid he wanted, and if he thought she owed him anything else he was wrong.”

Kate listened in silence, her heart wrung for the boy. Her parents had given up hope she’d ever come along and when she had, they had loved her unconditionally. Even with Abel, as crusty and undemonstrative as he had been, she had known that he had cared.

“She never wanted me, Kate,” he said, his voice low. “She never cared. If she did, she’d have listened when I told her I didn’t want to go Outside. I could have stood it in Anchorage, so long as I got to visit you once in a while.” He paused. “Well, I think I could have. But she wouldn’t listen, she just put me on a plane.” He looked at her. “She doesn’t want me, and she doesn’t know me or what I want. I don’t owe her anything.”

Kate, who knew a lot more about the wrath Jane had visited upon Jack’s head than she was letting on, didn’t have an answer for him that wouldn’t make him feel worse. Whatever indifference he showed to the world, Jane was his mother. Kate’s mother had died when Kate was very young and Kate’s grandmother had been the dominant female figure in her life. Even now, two years after Emaa’s death, Kate still wondered if her grandmother had loved her for herself or because her grandmother saw her as someone with enough strength and ability to follow Emaa into the leadership of their tribe.

She said, “Johnny, I don’t want you to stay up here.”

He bristled. “Why not? I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t. I said I didn’t want you to. I want you to come on back down to the cabin. Tomorrow we’ll lay out the foundation of yours.”

“Ifs better if I stay here. That way if she comes—”

“If she comes, we’ll deal with it. I don’t want you up here alone. I’d worry about you.”

“I’ve got your rifle.”

“You won’t when I leave.”

“I can shoot! Dad taught me!”

“I know, but I haven’t checked you out on this particular rifle myself yet. Not to mention which…” Kate took a deep breath. “Johnny, you don’t ever take someone’s rifle away in the Bush without permission.” She held up a hand and he checked himself, his face red and scowling. “Johnny, there’s another reason, and it’s more important than any of the rest, and it’s this. I don’t want you to learn how to run away.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t want you to learn that running away is an acceptable response to trouble.” She looked at his mutinous expression and laughed a little. “Johnny, you haven’t seen trouble like it’s going to come at you in your life. Everyone runs into trouble sooner or later, if they’re breathing, if they’re conscious, if they’re in the world. How you handle it, when it comes, is what makes you.”

The silence hung heavy over the campfire. Kate let it. At last Johnny stirred and said in a painful rasp, “You think I ran away from Dad dying?”

His words struck at her like a sledgehammer. “I don’t think you ran away from your Dad’s death,” she said when she got her breath back. “I did. I ran away, as far away as I could get, to a place where hardly anybody knew me, and I hid out. All the while pretending I was fine, just fine, when I wasn’t. I could have stayed there the rest of my life, keeping my head down, drifting through life.”

“What happened?”

What the hell had happened? She still wasn’t sure. “Someone who knew me saw me. And there was a… thing. A case. I helped solve it. Sort of. Anyway, it reminded me.” She shrugged. “It’s what I do. Find things out.”

“Catch bad guys,” Johnny said.

“Yeah.”

“Like Dad.”

“Yeah. A lot of people aren’t lucky enough to find that one thing they’re good at. But if you do, I think you should do it. Practice it. Make a living at it if you can. Make a difference, if you can.”

“I don’t have a thing.”

“You will,” she said. “Don’t let it be running away.”

Mutt had been resting her head on her paws, bright eyes traveling back and forth between her two humans. One of her ears twitched toward home. She raised her head and looked in that direction, both ears testing the air like elongated insect antennae.

“What is it, girl?” Kate said, and then she heard it, too, and got to her feet.

It was another four-wheeler. Vanessa Cox was driving it.

A smile spread across Johnny’s face.

Vanessa killed the engine and dismounted.

Johnny got to his feet. “Hey, Van.”

“Hey, Johnny. Hello, Kate.”

“Hi,” Kate said.

“Want some coffee?” Johnny said.

“Cocoa,” Vanessa said, and unstrapped a sleeping bag and a pack from the back of the four-wheeler.

Our girl Friday has arrived, Kate thought. “You bunking out here, too?” she said.

“Uh-huh.” Vanessa unrolled the bag, folded it in thirds, and sat down on it cross-legged. She pulled her pack into her lap and produced a Ziploc bag full of peanut butter cookies. “Have one?” she said to Kate. Her gaze was wide and clear and without a trace of embarrassment.

“Thanks,” Kate said, “I had one earlier.” She finished her coffee, mostly to give herself time to think. “Virgil and Telma know where you are?” she said finally.

“They’re not worried about me,” Vanessa said.

The light from the fire flickered over her face. She looked and sounded tranquil, so much so that Kate decided not to point out that Vanessa hadn’t answered her question.

So Johnny had told someone where he would be. That was good. That someone was a child. That was bad. But now Kate knew where they both were. That was good.

Chances were Vanessa had snuck out of her house without permission. That was bad. They were obviously close friends. That was good. Just how friendly were they?

That could be seriously bad. They had school tomorrow. Ah-hah. “You’ve got school tomorrow,” she said.

“We’ll go from here,” Johnny said.

Vanessa nodded. “I brought my books with me.”

Kate wondered what would happen if she ordered them to strike camp and follow her back to the homestead.

There was an old attorney proverb, something about never asking a witness a question to which you didn’t already know the answer.

She tested the air, trying to estimate the sexual tension between the two. She didn’t sense any, but that didn’t mean diddly. Adolescents were past masters at hiding things from adults, it came with the job description. She’d had the Talk with Johnny the previous winter, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know where babies came from.

She remembered something she’d heard Emaa tell the mother of a teenaged boy who was worrying over sending him to college Outside. “You bring them up good, you teach them all the right things, and you let them go. Nothing else to be done.”