“Who could have done this?” Leonard said for what had to be the ninth or tenth time.
“We don’t know yet, sir,” Liam replied. “It looks as if your wife was getting ready to open the post office for the day. What time might that have been?”
“She was always early,” one of the daughters-in-law volunteered. “She was always at the counter by nine o’clock, catching up on the books, ordering stamps, stuff like that.”
“What time do you normally get here?” Liam said to Wy.
Wy pushed away her plate, still full. “Depends which way I fly the route. Sometimes I start here and work south, sometimes I start at Mable Mountain and work north. Today I started at Mable Mountain.”
“Anybody know which way you’re flying on any given day?”
She shook her head.
“Who else lives in Kagati Lake?”
Leonard answered. “Not that many. This area is just a collection of homesteads, but not the normal kind of homesteads, you know, buying land from the state, proving up with a cabin in seven years and then it’s yours. A bunch of gold miners came through around the turn of the century, on their way to the Yukon, and some of them stopped off to do a little panning. They found color, so they staked claims. Some stayed, like my great-grandfather.”
Leonard pointed at a row of gold pans lined up on top of the kitchen cupboard that looked as if they had seen long and hard use. “He always said he was a gold miner, but he never did pack out much gold. Other than the one big nugget.” He got to his feet. “I’ll show you.”
The rest of them waited. “What the hell?” they heard him say, and then he reappeared in the kitchen door. For the first time he looked angry. “Is that what this was about? Opal killed over a lousy goddamn gold nugget?”
Not only was the gold nugget missing that had sat on the burlwood table for seventy years, but walrus bookends carved from jade, a hair clasp made of ivory and baleen carved in the shape of a whale, the ivory tusks that had hung from one wall, the collection of Yupik ivory animal charms from the mantelpiece, and a couple of the masks. Leonard pointed out the empty nails on the walls, his face dark with rage. “Somebody must have been ripping us off, and Opal caught him. Son of a bitch!” He rounded on Liam and said fiercely, “You got any idea who did this?”
“No,” Liam said.
Leonard glared. “Then what good are you?”
Prince opened her mouth and Liam waved her to silence. “I’ll need the names and locations of all your neighbors, Mr. Nunapitchuk.”
“Oh bullshit,” Leonard said. “Ain’t one of them going to do something like this. We’ve been living side by next to most of them for years.”
“Any of them you don’t get along with?”
“No!”
“Dad,” one of the sons said. “What about Dusty Moore?”
“Who’s he?” Liam said.
Leonard’s lips tightened, and the son said, “Dad and Dusty have been mad at each other for ten years, ever since Mom won the postmaster’s contract. Dusty wanted it, and he wasn’t a good loser.”
“He make any threats?”
“He made threats all over the place,” Leonard said, “but he wouldn’t kill over something like this.”
To the son Liam said, “Do you have a map of the area, with the settlements marked?”
“You going to try finding them tonight?”
“No, we have to get your mother’s body back to Newenham tonight so we can get it into Anchorage first thing tomorrow morning.”
“I can do that, sir,” Prince said, and from the expression on her face immediately regretted it. She’d rather be in hot pursuit than ferrying a body.
To Wy Liam said, “You give me a ride back in the morning?”
She hesitated. “What about Tim?”
He’d completely forgotten about Tim, and the reminder made him uncomfortable. “Tim,” he said. “Right.” He turned to Prince. “Give Bill a call, tell her to tell Moses that he’s got baby-sitting duty.”
Prince nodded crisply. Natalie Gosuk had never mentioned Wy’s name, so Prince had probably not made the connection, Natalie to Tim to Wy. Liam was relieved. Prince was a straight arrow. She wasn’t going to take kindly to him helping to flout a court order, and he would just as soon put that evil day off as long as possible.
“Certainly, sir,” she said.
“Okay?” he said to Wy.
“Okay.” To Prince she said, “Tell Bill to tell Moses to tell Tim I’ll be back before noon tomorrow.”
Prince nodded.
“About that map,” Liam said to the son.
Later, the dinner dishes cleared away, Liam and Wy stepped outside to allow the family to mourn in private. “Poor Leonard,” Wy said.
“I would have said, poor Opal.”
Wy shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. This is the second time in eight years he’s lost a member of his family.”
“Who else?”
“They had another daughter. Ruby.”
“What happened to her?”
“Nobody knows.” Wy sighed. “Leonard took all four kids out hunting one fall some years back. They spread out in back of a herd of caribou. Ruby got lost. They never found her.”
“Poor Leonard,” Liam agreed.
Rainbow Creek, September 1
Peter Obadiah Cole was widely believed by other Bush rats to be on the run from the law, and that was true.
He was also on the run from Congress, the courts and the White House; in fact, from all branches of government. He was on the run from traffic, in the air, on the ground or out at sea. He was on the run from bad movies, and television commercials, and television reporters with shellacked hair who couldn’t pronounce the name of the place they were reporting from. He was on the run from Mormon missionaries knocking at the door wanting to save his soul, from local politicians who made promises to get into office and then made more to get into higher office and never did get around to keeping the first ones.
He was on the run from no-smoking sections in restaurants.
He was on the run from jets taking off around the clock from Anchorage International Airport.
He was on the run from people tossing butts out of the windows of their cars while they waited for the lights to change at Fourth and L.
He was on the run from Jet Skis run by drunks all over Big Lake. He was on the run from people letting their dogs run loose on the Coastal Trail, shitting all over the place and biting little kids and fighting each other every chance they got. He was on the run from the Kmarts and the Wal-Marts and the Fred Meyers and the Eagles and the OfficeMaxes, all the big ugly box stores full of high-priced crap that nobody really needed and paid too much money for anyway.
He was on the run from faxes and e-mail and voice mail. He was most especially on the run from cell phones.
He’d been born in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1949, the only child of parents who worked hard and never said much. His father had been a veteran of the war in the Pacific, and as soon as he was old enough, Peter followed in his footsteps and joined the Marines. He spent three tours in Vietnam, and never would have rotated out if goddamn Nixon hadn’t declared peace with honor and brought them all home, with the Cong nipping at their heels all the way.
Nobody spit on him when he came home. He regretted it. You don’t train somebody in special weapons and tactics, hone him into a killing machine and then get in his face when he gets off the plane.