Spoils of the dead

by Dana Stabenow

  They parked to one side of a large, empty hangar, and started to walk the dirt road into town. “Who are we going to see, again?”

  “Alexei and Kimberley Petroff,” he said. “They were at Gabe’s party on Monday night. He’s the chief of the local tribe and she’s his wife.”

  “So, opportunity, and you say there are rocks all over the place so I guess there were means.”

  “For everyone.”

  “What about motive?”

  “I don’t know. Depends if Alexei is a tree cutter or not.”

  She knew what he meant. Some Alaska tribes wanted to exploit their resources; some wanted to protect what they had. In Alaska, no matter the community, it was always about what you could pull out of the ground and the water.

  They walked up the dusty road to the bridge and crossed it into town. It was very small, one main street half a mile long paralleled by another small street and side streets connecting the two. It looked a lot like Blewestown’s grid, on a smaller scale. “Paved, with curbs and sidewalks and even street signs,” Wy said. “Just like downtown. I wonder who lives here with that kind of pull.”

  She could be forgiven her cynicism. It always came down to who lived where when it came to apportioning the state’s budget. Sometimes Wy thought it would be more egalitarian to rotate legislative seats through all the villages, towns, and cities of the state on a regular basis. The pork might be sliced more thinly but at least everyone would get a piece. “Hey, there’s a bar.”

  The Mussel Inn had a bar down the left and the inevitable old fart asleep with his head on it at one end. The right wall was lined with booths and the windows at the end overlooked the small boat harbor. It smelled strongly of deep fat frying and was lavishly festooned with fish nets decorated with corks, glass floats, and women’s underwear. The woman behind the bar, a diminutive dyed blonde with a pierced lip, narrowed her eyes when they asked for directions to the Petroffs’ home. “Why don’t I call them to make sure they’re home before you walk up?” she said, and didn’t wait on their answer to do so. It was a brief conversation and she hung up and said, “Up Castner, turn left on Kiska, right on Traversie, and up the hill. They’re at the top.”

  She didn’t exactly hand them their hats but it was clear that if they weren’t drinking they weren’t welcome.

  They followed her directions faithfully and came to Traversie and turned right. It was a short but steep climb. They emerged at the top to find a solidly built two-story log house that had been there for a while but looked well cared for, logs oiled, roof freshly shingled, the frames of the many sash windows newly painted a bright white. A fenced garden and a shop big enough to hold a small drifter on a trailer could be seen behind the house.

  As they approached the front door, it opened. Indubitably Alaska Native, Liam thought, medium/heavy with muscle, not fat, black/brown, early forties, no facial hair, no visible scars. Heavy brows that nearly met over his eyes in a permanent scowl. “Alexei Petroff?”

  “You the trooper?”

  “Yes. Liam Campbell. This is my wife and pilot, Wyanet Chouinard.”

  “I suppose this is about Erik.” Petroff didn’t wait for his answer, but stepped back, opening the door wide.

  They went up the steps and inside. The door opened into a small entryway lined with boots and coats. They toed off their shoes, and Petroff led them into the living room, a corner room with windows on both sides. It was lined with Sheetrock painted white, making it a lot lighter than most cabins he had been in, and, he’d bet, a lot warmer in the winter. Just in case it wasn’t, a rock fireplace with a metal insert and a fan had been built into a corner, and the furniture looked prebuilt and comfortable. “We’d like to speak to your wife, too, if she’s home,” Liam said.

  There was movement in the doorway and they stepped back to get out of the way of a woman carrying a tray holding mugs and a carafe. “I thought you might like some coffee,” she said. Also Alaska Native, medium/slight, black/brown, mid to late thirties. Her hair was pulled up and back with a clip and like all of them she wore a plaid shirt and jeans and socks on her feet. There were tiny gold hoops in her ears and a wedding ring on her left hand, no watch, but then who did wear watches anymore. She set the tray down on the coffee table and stood up, wiping her hands down her jeans, and looked at her husband.

  “Please, sit,” Petroff said, gesturing, and everyone sat down, Kimberley taking a chair opposite the couch instead of on it next to her husband. She sat on the very edge of the seat, her back straight with her hands clasped, until Petroff said, “You brought out the coffee, Kimberley, you might as well pour it.”

  “Oh.” She poured out and handed mugs around with hands that might have been shaking a little.

  “Is Sally Petroff any relation?” Liam said, hoping to ease the tension.

  “Our daughter,” Alexei said.

  “She’s my admin assistant at the post. A very capable young woman.”

  “Yes.”

  Okay. “So you’ve heard about Erik Berglund.”

  “I imagine everyone has by now,” Alexei said. “No secrets on the Bay.”

  Kimberley turned her head to look out the window.

  “It was not an accidental death,” Liam said. “It appears that the people at Gabe McGuire’s party were the last to see him alive. I’m talking to everyone who attended to try to get a sense of how he spent his last hours.”

  Kimberley stood up. “I forgot the cream and sugar. I’ll be right back.”

  Wy stood up and put her mug on the table. “May I help?” She followed Kimberley without waiting for an answer.

  “Gabe invited us to see his new movie,” Alexei said. “Food first, then a showing in his private theater. Dessert after, and then we went down to the boat and came home.”

  “It was pretty late when the party ended, after ten. Dark by then.”

  “It’s only an hour trip.” Alexei shrugged. “It was a clear night, and calm. Stars from horizon to horizon.” First gleam of humanity.

  “Did anyone see you come home?”

  “Sergei Pete was on the slip when we pulled in. He caught my line, helped snug us down.” He gave Liam Sergei’s phone number.

  “Did you talk to Erik Berglund that night?”

  Alexei shrugged again. “Said hi, how you doing.”

  “Nothing about his work?”

  “No.”

  A murmur of feminine voices, the words indistinguishable. “Erik Berglund showed me around his dig that day. He said he was trying to prove the existence of a traditional trail that led from the dig site to Soldotna and Kenai. He seemed to think it would affect exploratory drilling in the Bay.”

  Alexei snorted. “A broken snare and a couple of arrowheads is not going to make any difference to the oil companies or to the state.”

  “He used to work for UNESCO. He seemed to think that they might step in.”

  Alexei rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, we all heard how he wanted to turn the Bay into a World Heritage Site. Chungasqak Bay is not Mesa Verde. Besides, we don’t need UNESCO coming in and telling us what our history is. We know what our history is.”

  He stopped when Kimberley reappeared. She set a creamer and a sugar bowl down on the tray and sat down, again on the very edge of her seat, eyes fixed on her clasped hands. Wy followed and sat down next to Liam.

  “Forgive me, Ms. Petroff,” Liam said, “but another guest said that he saw you in conversation with Mr. Berglund.”

  She clasped her hands again, but before she did he could see that they were in fact trembling. Her face was pale and she would not meet his eyes. “We went to high school in Blewestown together. We were just catching up.”

  “But the person who saw you said that your conversation looked intense. What were you—”

  Alexei stood up. “That’s enough. I’ll see you out.”

  “Mr. Petroff—”

  “We have nothing further to say to you, Sergeant. We’re sorry Erik’s dead but we don’t know
what happened to him. You’ve seen that so-called trail down to his so-called dig. Have you considered that he might have just fallen down it?” Alexei stepped around the coffee table and perforce they stood up. By sheer force of presence Alexei shepherded them inexorably out of the living room, down the hall, and out the door.

  As they came down the steps, two young men in their late teens pulled up in a pickup and hopped out. They were carbon copies of Alexei. “Hey, Mom.” They looked curiously at Liam and Wy as they passed into the house. “You okay?”

  Liam waited until they were on Traversie again before he spoke. “Kimberley say anything to you?”

  “No, but she was trying very hard not to cry.”

  “I wish I’d been able to talk to her alone.”

  She looked at him. “You can make that happen.”

  “I know I can. And I may have to. I don’t think Len Needham was lying when he said he saw them in conversation at the party. Or that they were arguing.”

  “Alexei didn’t seem too pleased.”

  “No.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments. “You say everyone is telling you that Erik was quite the player. You think him and Kimberley—?”

  “It would give Alexei quite the motive, wouldn’t it?”

  They walked down Traversie to where it intersected with Castner and kept going down Kiska toward the airport. They passed several more street signs, Buck, Kerdook, Pletnikoff. “Oh,” Wy said. “That’s it.”

  “What’s it?”

  She was smiling. “I told you about Kapilat, right? It got wiped out by the tidal wave in the ’64 quake and the high tides after the land dropped?”

  “Yes?”

  “They bulldozed what was left and rebuilt the town the way we see it here today. That’s why the houses look so new. The Petroffs’ house is probably the oldest one in town because it was so high up it didn’t get hit.”

  “Okay?”

  “The two main streets are named Attu and Kiska.” She pointed at the nearest sign. “And the cross streets are named from the roster of the Alaska Scouts. One of them must have lived here, or, I don’t know, been a child of.”

  “Oh. Oh yeah. Okay, all right, pretty cool spotting there, Ms. Chouinard.”

  “Pretty cool doing,” she said. “I like this town.”

  When they walked past the cell tower sitting off Kerdook he called Sergei Pete, who was pleased to pick up on the first ring and confirm Alexei and Kimberley Petroff’s alibi in every detail. “So much for that possibility,” Liam said. “Motive, maybe, but no opportunity.”

  “The good news is your list is shrinking.”

  “It wasn’t that big to begin with.” And he had to get back on the plane.

  Wy’s phone rang as they arrived at the airstrip, Prince all over it with “Sexy MF.” Wy looked up to see Liam smirking at her. She rolled her eyes and showed him the screen. It was Tim. “Hey,” she said. “How’s my guy?”

  “Is that Liam I hear laughing?” Tim said.

  His voice sounded deeper and more confident than the last time she’d spoken to him, although that might be her imagination. The boy hiding from his birth mother under the porch of their shack in Ualik was a distant memory. Or so she hoped. “Ignore him. How are you?”

  “Are you in Blewestown yet?”

  “Got here Monday. Gorgeous weather, I could have been here in time for lunch, but I took the scenic route.”

  “The new house okay?”

  “Yeah. Unbelievably it’s as nice as advertised, and we’ve already had our first house guest.”

  “I bet that’d be the one, the only Jo Dunaway.”

  “You’d win that bet.”

  “So annoying,” he said. “I wanted to be your first guest.”

  “You can be our second,” she said, trying not to sound too needy.

  “She stopped by to say hi on her way down.”

  “She said. Said you looked like you were doing good.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was thinking of driving down next weekend. Or, no, the weekend after that, I’ve got a big ass test coming up the Monday after next weekend.” He hesitated. “Okay if I bring someone with me?”

  Liam saw Wy come to attention. “A guest would be fine,” she said, elaborately casual. “Anybody we know?” He mumbled something. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “It’s a friend,” he said at better volume, and this time she could clearly hear the embarrassment.

  “What’s her name?” Liam’s eyes widened and he made a jerk-off motion with his hand. She pretended she didn’t see.

  “I didn’t say she was a girl.”

  “You just did.”

  He grumbled. “You think you’re so smart.”

  “What’s her name and where is she from?”

  “Anna Barnes. She’s from Cordova. She’s studying for an A&P certificate, too.”

  “Well, tell Anna we’d be happy to have her come visit,” Wy said, trying not to purr. “Will you require one room or two?”

  “Mom!”

  “Hey, just being a good hostess.” She dropped the teasing note. “Can’t wait to see you, kid. I love you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll text when we leave.”

  “Okay.” She clicked off and beamed at Liam. “He’s coming and he’s bringing a girl with him.”

  “I heard. I’m glad the guest bedrooms are on the other side of the house.”

  “Liam!”

  They taxied up to the tie-down in Blewestown twenty minutes later. Liam’s phone rang as he got out (Britney Spears and “I’m a Slave 4 U”). It was Hans Brilleaux, the medical examiner, in Anchorage. He was just glad it wasn’t Barton. “Hey, Brillo,” he said.

  “WHAT KIND OF CRAZY FUCKING ASSHOLE DOES THIS, CAMPBELL?”

  Liam yanked the phone away from his ear. “Jesus, Brillo. Dial it down, wouldya? I’ve only got two eardrums and Barton’s already taken out one.”

  There was a heavy exhale. When Brillo spoke again he had dialed it down but Liam could hear the hard edge of rage as plain as if Brillo was in his face like the wire-haired terrier he was, teeth bared and sharp enough to draw blood. “I want to know what kind of sick, sorry, sadist does this kind of thing. And then I want you to shoot them.”

  “What kind of thing? Is this about Erik Berglund?”

  A silence, where Liam got the impression that Brillo was working at containing his anger and not succeeding very well. “No,” he said very precisely. “It is not about Erik Berglund. It’s about the skeleton you dropped on me along with Erik Berglund.

  “All of his long bones are broken in multiple places, humerus, ulna, radius, femur, tib/fib. The feet were broken at the joints. The spine half a dozen times. And the skull… Jesus, Liam. It’s like someone tried to pulverize it.”

  “His?” Liam said.

  “It’s a boy. I’d say about ten years old.”

  “How long has the body been there?”

  “Thirty years, give or take.”

  “Jesus.”

  He thought about the cave behind the cave and the limited access between them. And then he realized what must have happened. Someone had deliberately broken the bones of the body of the ten-year-old boy into pieces small enough to fit through the crack, which was so narrow no one would ever find it, or if they did, think to look for anything inside it.

  Except maybe another ten-year-old kid. It was why the bones were so close to the crack, he realized. The killer couldn’t shove them in any farther because the crack was so narrow. He hadn’t been able to get his arm in past his bicep. “Brillo, can you tell if the injuries were pre- or post-mortem?”

  “I’m pretty sure the fracture on the left side of the skull was the killing blow. If he wasn’t dead he would have been unconscious or comatose when the rest of his body was broken into bits and pieces. Do you know who did it, Liam?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Find him.”

  This wasn’t professional, Brillo’s rage, it was personal.
Child killings brought out the vengeful god in everyone. “What about Erik Berglund?”

  He heard keys clicking. “Oddly enough, Berglund’s injuries were similar if not as extensive. There was a blow to the left side of his head, and his left elbow and clavicle are cracked. He’s also got a hell of a lot of cuts and bruises, and his hands are all torn up. Was there blood at the scene?”

  “Not a lot, no.”

  “Could he have fallen after he was struck?”

  Liam thought of that sidewinder of a trail leading to the dig. Erik could have been struck at the signpost. “Yes.” And then fallen all the way down it, and at the bottom crawled to the tent and into the cave. And he had then tried to make a call on his dead phone.

  He remembered the wear and tear on Erik’s clothes. Liam hadn’t looked closely at the trail but he had looked. It had rained on Tuesday and the body hadn’t been found until Wednesday. The rain must have washed away any blood. “Time of death?”

  “How cold is it in that cave?”

  “Say fifty degrees or thereabouts.”

  Brillo grunted. “Then I’d say somewhere between Monday night and Tuesday morning.”

  What Liam had estimated. “Okay. Thanks, Brillo.”

  “Find that fucker, Campbell.”

  “I will.”

  Liam clicked off and thought bleakly of the new scenario laying itself out before him. If Erik had been attacked at the top of the trail and not the bottom, then anyone of any size or age could have done it without negotiating that killer trail. His pool of potential suspects had grown to include anyone in the general area of the Lower Peninsula on Monday night.

  Great.

  Eighteen

  Friday, September 6

  THE NEXT MORNING LIAM WENT STRAIGHT to the post, told his administrative aide that he wasn’t in to anyone who called, and locked himself in his office.

  He took a ruler, a pencil, and a blank piece of paper and created a grid. In the central square he wrote “Erik Berglund.” He got out his phone and opened the Notes app and began filling in the squares around Berglund.

  Gabe McGuire. Lived almost on top of Erik’s dig. By his own admission had a beef with Berglund over the right of way, but Liam was no scalp hunter and with the best will in the world he couldn’t put McGuire in the frame. He had more to lose than all of the other suspects put together. He had motive and he sure had opportunity, though, so McGuire went in a square next to Erik.