“So, she turns to go for the rifle, he shoots, she spins around, falls. He takes the cash and the rifle and leaves.”
“From the look of the wound, I’ll bet the slug ricocheted off a bone,” he said. “It could be anywhere.” Bullets frequently had minds of their own once they impacted their target and Liam placed no dependence on their being able to find this one. Which didn’t mean they wouldn’t look.
A series of large V-shaped shelves took up the corner from floor to ceiling, the top half divided into square, open-ended boxes, some with mail in them, some not. The bottom half was divided into drawers, and the two were bisected by a narrow counter, also V-shaped.
“She hit her head on the way down,” Prince said, pointing at a dark brown smudge on the edge of the counter.
“Twice,” Liam said, looking at another smudge on the second drawer down. They checked and found blood matted in Opal’s hair.
Envelopes, letter size, business size, nine-by-thirteen manilas and priority mail, were scattered across the floor, the shelves they had fallen from teetering dangerously at the edge of the desk they sat on. At least she went down fighting, they both thought.
Liam prodded Opal’s arm. “Rigor’s coming on.” He looked at his watch. “It’s going on seven o’clock.” He looked up. “What would you say the temperature was in this room?”
“Fifty-five, maybe.”
“Outside?”
“Temperature at Newenham airport was fifty-four when we left.”
“But this is farther north, and higher up. The walls are pretty thick, not many windows. Probably didn’t get above sixty-five all day in here.”
“Sounds about right.”
“So, she died ten, maybe twelve hours ago, you think?”
Prince shrugged. “M.E. will tell us more.”
“Yeah, but I want to know how much of a head start the son of a bitch has on us, and we’re going to miss the last jet to Anchorage by the time we get the body back to Newenham, which means it’ll be two, three days before the M.E. has a time of death.”
“Not smelling much yet.”
“No. Which could mean she hasn’t been here that long, or that it never warms up in here.” He looked back down at the body. “Robbery, you think?”
Prince spotted a group of pictures sitting on a table, and went over to look. The dead woman was in several, surrounded by what looked like husband and children, and more than one with the house they were standing in in the background. “Could be. This is probably her home, too. We don’t know what’s missing.” She pushed back her cap to scratch above her ear, resettled the cap. “If this were Anchorage, I’d say someone was making a hit on people’s Social Security checks. But way out here… well, I don’t see some thug hiking five hundred miles through the Bush to coldcock some old woman for her hundred-and-fifty-dollar Social Security check.”
“Yeah. We’ll have to find out how many were due to this post office today, how many people collect it hereabouts.”
“Goody.” Prince paused. “You think it was someone she knew?”
“Usually is.” Liam stood up and looked around. “And this would be an awfully big house to live in alone.”
It was a large, rectangular room, furnished with couches and recliners and dominated by a fireplace made of rock that boasted its own spit. Alaskan memorabilia was piled in every corner there wasn’t a bookshelf, including a Japanese glass float with the net still on that looked a foot and a half in diameter. There were black-and-white pictures of tall, thin men in leather jackets and hats with chin straps standing in front of open-cockpit biplanes, interspersed with paintings in oil and watercolor, some good, some bad, and a small one of a cache on stilts in winter that could have been an original Sydney Lawrence. Considering how much Lawrence traveled around Alaska, and considering how often he painted for booze, the possibility was not at all unlikely. If that was the case, why would the robber leave something so valuable behind? Liam was fuzzy on the valuation of art, but even a small painting by Lawrence had to be worth two or three thousand dollars, and this one was a very portable size.
There was a window next to the painting and through it Liam could see a thermometer fixed to the eaves of the house. It read fifty-one degrees. That was warm for the north side of a house, which meant it might have been a lot warmer in Kagati Lake than he had originally thought. Warm temperatures delayed rigor, so Opal Nunapitchuk could have been dead longer than ten to twelve hours, which only put more time between the killer and the scene.
He looked at the table standing next to the dark green recliner. It was a slab of burlwood, sanded, polished and finished with a coat of Verathane. A trick of the fading evening sun reflected off the glass on one of the watercolor paintings and landed on the table, which was covered with a fine layer of dust, except where something sort of square had been sitting until very recently.
Scattered around the room were three other tables, one hutch and the mantelpiece. All of them needed dusting, and all of them were missing objects that had heretofore kept at least the area beneath them clean. “Prince?”
A flash went off behind him. “Sir?”
“Light a lamp if you can find one, would you? It’s getting too dark to see.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And get pictures of all the tabletops and the mantelpiece.”
“Fingerprints?”
“I didn’t see any. But dust everything anyway. Start with the counter and the cash box.”
He heard the sound of an engine, no, two, outside. They paused, idling, and he heard Wy’s voice. He went swiftly to the door and in the dusk saw a man on a four-wheeler with two Blazo boxes strapped on behind with bungee cords. He looked to be in his late fifties, early sixties, maybe, a burly man with thick dark hair streaked silver that hung raggedly below his ears, and dark, narrow eyes nearly hidden in a mass of wrinkles that began in the middle of his forehead and cascaded down into laugh lines bracketing both eyes and mouth. He saw Liam over Wy’s shoulder, and Liam stepped forward.
“What’s going on?” the man said, his smile fading as he took in Liam’s uniform. He looked from Liam to Wy, who couldn’t meet his eyes and looked ashamed of it. He killed the engine and dismounted. “Where’s Opal?”
“Who are you, sir?” Liam said.
“This is Leonard Nunapitchuk,” Wy said. “Opal’s husband.”
Liam removed his hat and took a deep breath. “Mr. Nunapitchuk, there is no easy way to say this. Ms. Chouinard flew in this afternoon to deliver the mail, and she found your wife.”
Leonard Nunapitchuk’s skin paled beneath its ruddy tan. “Is she hurt? Opal? Opal!” He stepped forward, only to halt when Liam held up a hand.
“I’m afraid she’s dead, Mr. Nunapitchuk. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Leonard Nunapitchuk stared at him without comprehension. “Opal is dead?”
“Yes.”
“No.” Opal’s husband shook his head decidedly. “No, she isn’t. I was just here, last weekend. We were all here.” He waved a hand, and Liam looked beyond him, across the airstrip where the trees parted for a path. The moon had risen as the sun had set and painted a stepstone path of silver across the ripples of Kagati Lake. The breeze paused, and in the momentary lull Liam heard the murmur of voices, punctuated by a laugh.
There was a sudden shaft of light from the open door of the house as Prince lit the large Aladdin lantern sitting on the hutch next to the door, and Liam looked at Leonard Nunapitchuk, who was about five feet four inches tall and whose belly was just barely restrained by a wide, worn leather belt. There was a hunting knife in a stained leather sheath hanging from the belt. He had a rifle, a Remington.30-30, it looked like, hanging over his shoulder.
His clothes, a fatigue jacket over a cotton shirt in faded blue plaid and jeans, were grubby. His boots were shiny with fish scales. He smelled like woodsmoke, sweat and salmon, like Moses did when he came back from Old Man Creek.