"And conveniently kill the only two witnesses?” Owen put in, turning the key in the ignition.
"And conveniently not kill Tremaine?” added John. “Just bury him up to his eyeballs in the ice for two days?"
Gideon pulled his own door closed and settled himself in the front passenger seat. “What are you ganging up on me for? You're the ones who're supposed to figure all the hard stuff out. What do I know? I'm just a simple bone man."
John muttered something, finished off the last of his candy bar, licked his fingers, and stuck the wrapper in the pocket of his denim jacket.
His plane, a single-engine two-seater with “Kwakiutl Airlines” stenciled on the doors, had been early. When Owen and Gideon had arrived at the lonely cedar-board longhouse that was the Gustavus/Glacier Bay Airport terminal building, the big FBI agent had been sprawled on a wooden bench, sipping from a cardboard cup of coffee from one vending machine and munching a Butterfinger bar from the other.
"No breakfast,” had been his wistful greeting.
"I figured you wouldn't get a chance to eat,” Owen had said. “I asked them to have something for us at the lodge when we get there."
John had brightened immediately, but it hadn't stopped him from getting another cup of coffee and a second Butterfinger. Gideon and Owen had gotten coffee too, and for fifteen minutes they had sat in the otherwise deserted waiting room talking over the case, trying and rejecting one murder scenario after another.
The only thing they'd agreed on was that the murder was probably unpremeditated. Why would Tremaine or anybody else have planned to kill someone out on Tirku Glacier, with the others right there and nobody else within fifty miles? Why not wait until they were all back in Gustavus, where there'd be a couple of hundred other people to serve as potential suspects too? As it turned out, the avalanche did just happen to come along and bury everything, but there had been no way to foresee that.
No, it had been unpremeditated, spur of the moment, a crime of passion; perhaps the outcome of a fight. The logic of the situation pointed to that. And-more important, in Gideon's mind-so did the damaged mandible.
Now Owen twisted the steering wheel, backed away from the terminal, and swung out of the parking lot. The airport in Gustavus was only eleven miles from the lodge, but it seemed as if it were on another continent. Southeastern Alaska, as Owen had told Gideon on the way out, was a land of microclimates. There were no towering hemlocks or spruce around Gustavus, no pleasant green hummocks of mossy undergrowth. Here there was just a drab, level, tundra-like plain, windswept and gloomy, alongside the gray waters of Icy Strait. No wonder they had put the airport here. No mountains to fly in over, no trees to get tangled up in, and not much in the way of bulldozing to get the place flat in the first place.
Owen edged the car onto the gravel road and turned right, toward the lodge. It was the only direction the road went. They drove past two rustic A-frames, the only structures in sight besides the terminal. The one on the left housed a smoked-salmon business, the other an arts-and-crafts shop. Both were closed. Between them a brave, brightly colored wooden sign announced “Puffin Mall. Hours 5-6 P.M. every day, June-September.” That was when the daily Alaska Airlines flight from Juneau made its turnaround stop.
"All right, try this on,” John said. “What if we jumped on the idea that Tremaine's the killer a little too fast? What makes us so sure it's him?"
"Well, he's the only one who came out of it alive,” Gideon said. “And he sure was in a hurry to get off the subject of that ice ax yesterday."
"That doesn't mean he killed anyone."
"I don't know. Even if he didn't, he must have seen what happened. He was right there."
"So?"
"So why didn't he ever say anything about it? It's been thirty years. He's talked about the avalanche in public hundreds of times."
"Maybe he was protecting somebody."
"Protecting somebody's memory?"
"Sure, why not? Or maybe he was saving it for this book he's writing, waiting until he could cash it in for big bucks."
"It's possible,” Gideon said. He doubted it, but John was right to keep his mind open.
"What the hell,” John said, “I'll be talking to him soon enough, see what he has to say. To the others too. Look, I think it'll work a lot better if we keep this whole business about the hole in the skull to ourselves for another day or so, okay?"
Gideon and Owen exchanged a look.
Owen spoke. “Uh, I'm afraid we have a small problem there."
John leaned back resignedly. “Oh, boy,” he said, “don't tell me."
"Sorry, my fault,” Gideon said, and went on quickly. “I don't suppose you've had a chance to put together any kind of a file on the case yet? Newspaper articles…?"
"There isn't much,” John said, leaning across the back seat to slide open a zippered pouch in his bag, “but I brought out copies of what I have.” He held up a thin sheaf of papers with a buff-colored cardboard cover and an Acco fastener at the side.
Gideon took it and turned to the first page. "Skagway Herald, July 27, 1960” was written in longhand across the top. The headline beneath was “Avalanche Near Glacier Bay. Scientific Research Team Feared Lost.’ He read on with interest.
"About this breakfast,” John said to Owen. “I hope we're talking real food here-eggs, bacon, that kind of thing?"
"Whatever you want,” Owen said over his shoulder. “We'll be there in ten minutes; 8:45 at the latest."
"Good, I just might make it,” John said, leaning comfortably back. Then, abruptly, he sat up straight, swiveling his head to stare at a rapidly receding dark shape in the roadside foliage. “What the hell was that?"
"Bear,” Owen said casually. “Brown, I think. Maybe black. Hard to tell the difference this time of year."
"Jesus Christ,” John muttered, settling back and closing his eyes, “where did they send me?"
Shirley Yount banged her coffee cup into its saucer. “It's twenty minutes after eight. Maybe somebody ought to go knock on his door."
This was said with more relish than impatience. Like the others, she was eager to get at Tremaine, who had been on the run from them since the electrifying news of thirty-year-old foul play on Tirku had buzzed so excitedly around the bar the night before. Tremaine had not appeared for dinner, and now here he was, going on half an hour late for their daily breakfast meeting.
"He knows what time it is. He is choosing to avoid us,” said Anna Henckel, who believed in stating the obvious.
"I wonder why,” Elliott Fisk said dryly, slicing a one-by-two-inch rectangle from his cinnamon roll and facing carefully away from Shirley, lest she think he was speaking to her.
"Well, he's going to have to come out and face us sooner or later,” Walter Judd said with a happy grin. He buttered another couple of biscuits to go with his three-egg, fresh-salmon omelet. “And when he does, he's going to have a few questions to answer."
"He sure is,” Pratt agreed equably, working steadily on a plate of steak and eggs.
"If I knew his room number I'd go get him myself,” Fisk grumbled.
Anna glanced at him, eyebrows lifted fractionally. “Room 50."
"Oh?” Fisk paused in his dissection of the bun. “Yes, well, I'll give him fifteen more minutes. Until 8:45."
Doris Boileau placed the small paper-wrapped bar of Camay on the bathroom counter, put a larger one on the recessed shelf of the shower stall, and took a final practiced look around. Satisfied, she closed the door to the room behind her and checked her watch. Only a little after eight-thirty and here she was already done with Room 48, way ahead of schedule. It certainly was a help when people got up and about their business early.