Gheen was interviewed on Channel 11, where the pretty anchor punctuated every phrase with a nod and began every sentence with “Now.” She asked him why he did it, her brows puckered with pretended puzzlement, her attention divided between Gheen and the camera lens. He stared at her bovinely. She spoke the names, rendered like the tolling of a bell, Merla Dixon in 1983, Sarah Berton in 1985, Paulette Gustafson in 1986, Kristen Anderson in 1986, Ruby Nunapitchuk in 1991, Brandi Whitaker in 1992, Stella Silverthorne in 1994, Christine Stepanoff in 1996, Cheryl Montgomery in 1997. Rebecca Hanover. The three unidentified bodies the medical examiner would only say might have been buried in, respectively, 1982, 1983 and 1988.
Won’t you tell us, the little anchor asked prettily, who the other three women were? What were their names?
“Elaine,” Gheen had said, and smiled.
Gheen’s public defender had orchestrated the television interview. He went into court the following week and petitioned for a change of venue, arguing that his client could not get a fair trial in Newenham. Or anywhere else anybody watched television, Liam thought, a hard place to find, even in Alaska, in this age of satellite television. It sounded as if Gheen’s P.D. would go for an insanity defense, but thanks to one of the few smart laws the Alaska legislature managed to pass in spite of themselves in recent years, Gheen could plead insanity all he wanted. He’d serve time in the Alaska Psychiatric Institute until his doctors declared him cured, from which time he would be incarcerated for fifteen life sentences, to be served consecutively. If district attorney, judge and jury did their job, that is.
Liam knew sincere regret that Bill Billington couldn’t sit on a felony case. Almost twenty years-that they knew of-almost twenty years Gheen had been kidnapping and killing women. He fit no known profile, other than that he was white and male. He’d started his killing later in life than most serial killers, but that was only so far as they knew. He’d kept trophies. He hadn’t stuck to victims of his own race, there hadn’t been any apparent acceleration of murder toward the end, he’d kept his victims alive, some, it seemed, for years.
Liam had interrogated Gheen once before shipping him to Anchorage. “What went wrong?” he’d asked Gheen. “Why did you have to kill them? They run away? They get pregnant and you couldn’t stand the thought of sharing? You hit them too hard, too often, and they up and die on you?”
Gheen had looked back at him, very calm, very still within his handcuffs and manacles and leg chains. His gaze was open and disinterested.
“Who was Elaine?” Liam said. “You buried her twelve times, she must mean something to you. Who was she?”
At that Gheen smiled, the same smile he would give the little anchor on Channel 11. “Elaine was my wife.” His eyes went dreamy. “Elaine the fair, Elaine the beautiful, Elaine the lily maid of Astolat.”
“She left you,” Liam said.
Gheen smiled again.
“She never left me,” he said.
Bill was back behind the bar, serving beer to Moses, who was also back and as cranky as ever. He’d been waiting on Wy’s deck the morning after he got out of the hospital, and as far as Liam could tell, stifling an inner groan, it would take more than a bullet to slow him down. Liam, Wy and Tim went through the form five times that morning. Moses didn’t even break a sweat. Liam lived for the day when he could say the same.
Amelia was buried in the Newenham cemetery, Darren Gearhart sobbing his heart out at the gravesite. Liam had to restrain Bill from assaulting him.
A few brief words from Bill had told Wy about Tim and Amelia. Wy asked him about her when they got back home that afternoon. “I liked her,” Tim said, and made it clear that that was all he was going to say.
He at least had found a measure of closure by bearing witness to the disappearance of Christine Stepanoff. The remains beneath one of the wooden markers had matched dental records in Newenham. “She was really nice,” he told Wy.
It was the first time he’d spoken of anyone from the tiny village where he had survived his childhood.
“She probably saved my life,” he added.
The next time Wy flew into Ualik, she spent an extra hour on the ground while she knocked on doors. Two weeks later she gave Tim a package. “What is it?” he said.
“Open it.”
He did, and found a brass frame enclosing the picture of a girl with narrow, tilted brown eyes, a long fall of straight brown hair and a laughing face. “Christine,” he said, his voice a bare breath of sound.
“Her grandmother still lives in Ualik. She loaned me the negative. I just got it back from Anchorage today.”
He gripped the frame tightly in both hands, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking. He said something she couldn’t make out. “What?”
He raised his head and her heart turned over at the sight of his ravaged face. “Oh Tim, I’m so sorry, I-”
He barreled into her headfirst, the picture thudding into her spine when he threw his arms around her. “She looks like Amelia,” he whispered.
She held him without words, grateful she could do that much, angry that she could not do more. Hot tears soaked into her shirt.
After a while he quieted. “Thanks, Mom,” he whispered.
“Hey,” she whispered back. “It’s what I do.”
She looked up and saw Liam standing in the hallway, watching, with something that wasn’t quite a smile on his face. “You always figure out the right thing to do,” he said later, “and then you do it.”
She was taken aback. “You make me sound like Mother Teresa.”
He laughed and hugged her. “Not hardly. Just Wy.”
No one has ever known me that well, she remembered saying to Jo. Well, Jo had replied, what does that tell you?
You always figure out the right thing to do, and then you do it.
Prince had served her the court order the day after they got back from Old Man Creek. She’d run to Bill to get a restraining order in response, but it was only temporary. Natalie would appeal to her pet judge and they’d be right back where they started.
She thought of Moses. She wondered what her life would have been like with him in it sooner. She wondered what her life would have been like if she’d ever seen her birth mother sober. If her adoptive parents hadn’t found her and kept her for themselves.
She thought long and hard of all of those things, she came to a decision and she laid her plans.
The knock came at nine a.m. the next Monday morning. Liam was at the post, Tim was at school. When Wy opened the door, a woman with clear eyes and clean clothes stood on the other side.
Wy took a deep breath. “Hello, Natalie,” she said steadily. “Please come in.”
At nine-fifteen the phone in the trooper post rang. Liam picked up the phone and John Dillinger Barton bellowed, “Congratulations, Sergeant Campbell!”
He sat very still. He was alone in the office, Prince off cruising the road to Icky in hopes of apprehending transgressors. “What did you say?”
“What, suddenly you got wax in your ears?”
This for Barton was almost playful. “Did you call me sergeant?” Liam said.
“I sure as hell did! Grabbing up a serial killer, especially one nobody knew was operating until a couple of weeks ago, and putting away thirteen of fifteen murder cases oughta be worth a piddly little promotion. Even those assholes down in Juneau gotta admit that! When can you get here?”
“What? Where?”
“Here, where the hell do you think? Jesus, Liam, wake up! You been promoted, I can bring you back to Anchorage, you’re back on the fast track, boy! Get on a plane!”
Dana Stabenow
