“From what her friend Nina said,” Liam said slowly, “Rebecca Hanover wasn’t more than lukewarm about spending the summer out there.”
“If he told her about this wonderful new idea just before they were scheduled to leave-” Jo said.
Liam looked at Wy. “Tell me everything you remember about Rebecca Hanover.”
“I already did.”
“Tell me again.”
He was all trooper now, firm, implacable, totally focused on the job. He bore no resemblance whatever to the furious man who had raked her over the coals at Nenevok Creek. In one way, she welcomed it. In another, she did not. She got up and went to the corner desk from where she ran her business, and pulled out a tall red book filled with dated, lined pages. She opened it and flipped through May, until she found the day she wanted. “Here it is, May twenty-ninth, the Saturday before Memorial Day. Passengers Mark and Rebecca Hanover, along with two hundred pounds of freight, to Nenevok Creek.”
Wy looked up. “She was frightened. First time she’d been in a small plane, I think. But he jollied her on board. They sat in the back-we had to take the Cessna because of all the freight-and I strapped some of their canned goods into the front seat to balance out the load. It was a clear day, maybe an eight-knot wind, easy flight, eighty-five minutes there and back again, no problem.”
“How did she strike you?”
Her eyes narrowed in memory. “As a dyed-in-the-wool city girl,” she said after a moment. “She’s beautiful, blond hair, blue eyes, great figure. Immaculate manicure. Soft voice, called him honey a lot. She’s not your typical Bush rat. Her husband had the gold bug, and she was along for the ride.”
“Willingly?”
She considered. “If you mean by that, did he have a pair of handcuffs on her, no.”
“But?”
“But.” She met Liam’s eyes straight on for the first time in forty-eight hours. “But she wasn’t happy about his decision.”
“She think it was pie in the sky? Gold mining is, mostly.”
Wy shook her head. “Wasn’t the money. She just didn’t want to be out there. It was like pulling up a hothouse orchid and trying to transplant it on the moon. She knew it. He didn’t.” She looked down at the Day Timer, leafed through some more pages. “I dropped off supplies half a dozen times. Every time, she was waiting at the strip. I took her some newspapers and magazines and she was, well, almost pathetically grateful.”
She closed the book and raised her head. “I don’t think she killed him, Liam. She isn’t the type.”
“Everybody’s the type, Wy, given the right provocation.”
“I know you always say that,” she said stubbornly, “but she loved him. They had this kind of, I don’t know, sexual thing going on that practically gave off sparks. He was gorgeous, too, one good-looking hunk of man. What’s more, I’d say he loved her as much as she did him.”
“Never underestimate what three months in the Bush will do to a relationship,” Jim observed. “You see the results in the front pages of her rag every day.” He hooked a thumb at Jo.
“Hey,” she said, faintly protesting. “I resemble that remark.”
Wy put the book back on the desk. “Are you still absolutely sure Hanover’s death has nothing to do with Opal’s?”
His eyes went from her to the map on the wall behind her. “Different weapon. A long way to go on foot in a very short time. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.”
The phone rang and Bridget answered it. Liam could hear Prince’s voice. “One moment,” Bridget said. “It’s for you,” she added unnecessarily, and handed it over.
Prince wasted no time in pleasantries. “I just got a call via the marine operator. She relayed a call from an old guy up at”-he heard the rustle of paper in the background-“at Weary River. Is that right, Weary River?”
He carried the walk-around phone to the map on the wall. “Yeah,” he said, locating Weary River. About halfway between Rainbow and Russell. “I’ve got it.”
“Well, this old guy, he’s Italian or used to be before he homesteaded out at Weary River and turned American, and she couldn’t hardly understand him but she thinks he called to say that he’d found a body.” Prince’s excitement crackled down the line.
“Where?”
“A place called Rainbow.”
He moved his finger up. “Got it. Rainbow.” He was very conscious of Wy looking over his shoulder and the rest of them crowding around behind her. “Who’s dead?”
“A guy name of Peter Cole.”
“Peter Cole?” He felt Wy’s indrawn breath and looked at her. “Hold on.” To Wy he said, “You know him?”
She nodded, dazed. “He’s on my mail route.” She swallowed and met his eyes in sick apprehension. “The same day I went to Kagati Lake and found Opal Nunapitchuk.”
“You saw him that day?”
She shook her head. “I almost never do. He’s a hermit, doesn’t like being around people much. He left the bag to be picked up on the strip. I took it and left the incoming mailbag in its place.”
“Is that any way to treat the U.S. mail?” Jim said.
Wy shrugged. “It’s his way. He doesn’t hurt anybody.” She winced. “Or he didn’t.”
“Prince,” Liam said into the phone. “How did Peter Cole die?”
Her voice was triumphant. “The old Italian guy said he was shot.” She couldn’t have been happier if Ted Bundy were loose in the Bay.
“With what?”
A little deflated, Prince said, “He didn’t say, just that Cole was shot. He’s got a pretty thick accent,” she added. “It’s not easy to understand him over the radio.”
He was looking at the map, following the thick black line that marked Wy’s mail route, some of the destinations printed on the map, some penciled in later by Wy. Kagati Lake. Russell. Weary River, where the old Italian guy homesteaded. He tapped the map. “What’s his name, do you know?” he asked Wy.
“Julie Baldessario.”
“Julie?”
“Giuliano. But everyone calls him Julie.”
“He’s a reliable kind of guy?”
She nodded. “He’s about a million years old, came into the country after World War II. Lost his family in the Holocaust. Just looking for a little peace and quiet, I think.”
“Good story,” Jo said, interested.
Jim smacked her lightly on the arm, and she subsided.
“But he’s very much all there,” Wy said. “If he says he found Peter Cole shot, he found Peter Cole shot. The question is, what was Julie doing out in this?” She waved a hand at the storm outside.
Liam ignored her, continuing to trace the map with his forefinger. “Rainbow, Kemuk.” His finger had to make a little jog to one side. “Nenevok Creek.”
He stood up. “We’ve got dead people at Kagati Lake, Russell and Nenevok Creek. All were murdered. All were killed within five days of each other. Some nut is shooting his way from settlement to settlement.”
Wy was still staring at the map. Her face was white.
“Wy?” he said, touching her arm. “Wy, what is it?”
Mute, she pointed.
Her mail route took a dogleg between Rainbow and Kemuk and another between Warehouse Mountain, Kokwok and Akamanuk, but south of Akamanuk…
South of Akamanuk was Old Man Creek.
Wood River Mountains, September 6
She was so cold.
She couldn’t feel her hands anymore. Her feet had been numb since the night before.
She knew a storm was coming the previous afternoon when the low, dark clouds took over the sky and the wind began to bite into her flesh, but she’d never been outside in a storm before and she had had no idea how cold it would be.
She’d found rudimentary shelter in a hollow against the side of the uprooted cottonwood. What little wit she had left had murmured that something else might regard that hollow as its own, but she was too tired and too hungry and too cold to care. She found a long branch and propped it against the trunk over the hollow. She found other branches and leaned them against the first. She scraped together a covering of pine needles and fallen leaves and more branches, and then she crawled beneath it and curled into a sodden ball, shoving her hands between her thighs. If he found her, he found her. She had to rest. And she could go no further in the dark. She had fallen the night before and hurt her leg. She could still walk, but for a few paralyzing moments she had thought that it was broken, that she would be unable to move, to run, to flee, to fight if need be.