Spoils of the dead

by Dana Stabenow

  On Saturday morning he had spoken with Ms. Petroff’s aunt and uncle, and they had confirmed that she was indeed at the picnic on the beach on Monday evening and gone home with them when it ended. Evidently everyone in Blewestown who wasn’t at Gabe McGuire’s party had spent the afternoon and evening on the beach in a last gasp of summer celebration—maybe the beach party was a reward for the morning march—and there were hundreds more witnesses who could attest as to her whereabouts. He added her name to the outer edge of the square, on the other side of her parents.

  On Sunday afternoon Wy had flown him back to Kapilat for a second interview with Alexei and Kimberley Petroff. Kimberley had answered the door and very nearly slammed it in his face.

  “Let him in, Kimberley,” Alexei said from behind her. He sounded tired.

  They settled into the living room again in what was apparently now their assigned seating, although this time Kimberley sat down on the couch next to Alexei. Liam leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, running the band of his ball cap through his fingers. “Mr. Petroff, I understand you lost a brother thirty years ago.”

  Alexei’s eyes widened. “Yes.”

  “He was ten years old?”

  Alexei felt for Kimberley’s hand, his eyes never leaving Liam’s face. “Yes.”

  “I’ve read the file and the article in the local newspaper, but could you run that day down for me, please?”

  Alexei swallowed. “He and Erik were across the Bay with both our parents on a shopping trip. They told the boys they could take the skiff for a run, and they ended up on Sand Beach. Erik was attacked and left unconscious, and Josh disappeared.” He swallowed. “He was never found.”

  Liam took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The skeleton of a ten-year-old boy has been found near where Erik Berglund’s body was found.” Kimberley made a sound and Alexei pulled her in tight.

  Liam pulled a small, heavyweight manila envelope from his pocket. He unwound the string that secured the flap and produced a glass tube with a swab inside. “You are, I believe, his nearest living relative?”

  “Yes,” Alexei said, staring at the tube. “Both our parents are dead.”

  There had already been one unwelcome surprise revealed to this family from DNA this year, and Liam was sorry to have to foist a second on them, but it was the only way. He held up the tube. “If we could have a sample of your DNA, the medical examiner could test it against that of the skeleton’s. Then we would know.”

  Alexei appeared hypnotized by the sight of the tube. “How long will it take?”

  “One to three days, depending on how backed up things are at the lab.”

  “And then we’ll know.”

  Liam nodded. “Yes.”

  Alexei looked from the tube to Liam. “How did he die?”

  Liam could feel himself stiffening, and made an effort to relax. “I’m sorry to say he did not die of natural causes.”

  “He was murdered.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Liam answered it anyway. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  Liam could have made the standard answer, that the case was under investigation and the details were confidential until that investigation was concluded, but he could not bring himself to do so to this man who had lost his only brother thirty years before. “Blunt force trauma. A blow to the head.”

  “It would have been quick, then.”

  Liam sure as hell hoped so. “I believe so.”

  “Who kills a kid?” Alexei said, his face contorting. “Who the hell kills a ten-year-old kid out beachcombing on a sunny summer day? And leaves another one for dead?” He bent his head for a moment, blinking. Kimberley put her arm around his shoulders and tucked her head beneath his chin.

  When he looked up again he was dry-eyed and determined. He jerked his chin at the tube. “What do I do?”

  Now, on Monday morning, Liam looked down at the square, dissatisfied all over again. The square thing always worked. He willed it to do so again.

  Alexei and Kimberley Petroff were cleared, as Sergei Pete had confirmed.

  Domenica Garland’s Zoom meeting had checked out, too. It was the first time Liam had direct-dialed Europe. Her boss had sounded as if he were in the next room.

  Gabe McGuire had Len Needham for an alibi, although that was dicey since Len was also a close relative. But McGuire had zero motive. Liam had contacted the relevant authority at the borough and Gabe’s petition to vacate the right of way was on track to being approved and had been before Erik Berglund was murdered.

  Hilary Houten might have had motive but he came and left with Blue Jay Jefferson and let’s face it, the guy was in his eighties and he couldn’t get around without a honking big cane to hold him up. He wasn’t going to pick a physical fight with anyone.

  Same went for Blue Jay.

  Liam sat back and tossed down the pencil. He scrubbed his hands through his hair and swiveled to look out the window behind his desk. The view was somewhat obscured by the inevitable alders and ragged black spruce but there was enough room that he could see a slice of the Bay and the mountains beyond.

  He wondered if he’d made a mistake in accepting the Blewestown post. In Newenham he would have been out on a call already and catching up on three more from the day before. Of course he had been for a long time almost the only law enforcement officer within three hundred or more miles, so there was that. And he had been getting tired of the sameness of the job, the constant domestic violence calls, the drunk and disorderlies, the reported break-ins by tweakers looking for anything to sell so they could buy their next fix. Everybody remembered the murders because murder was high profile, the stuff of crime fiction and Hollywood blockbusters, but it was the daily grind of seeing his fellow citizens at their worst that wore him down. That wore them all down.

  One of the first things Wy had asked him when they met—it was one of the first things everyone asked—was why he had become a trooper. “For the uniform,” he had said, which was what he always said. It was flippant and flirty and non-responsive. It was also in some small part true. He’d grown up idolizing the Alaska State Troopers because they just looked so damn cool in their Smokey hats. He looked at his button-down flannel and jeans. His first official day on the job in Blewestown and he wasn’t wearing one. There were three clean, pressed, perfectly tailored uniforms hanging in the closet at home. What did that say?

  He wondered just how quick Barton was imagining he could slide Liam into a job at HQ in Anchorage. Back in the day it had been the height of Liam’s ambition to ascend the ladder to Barton’s job, boss of the whole damn shooting match. There had been a time when he’d kept a secret list of all the improvements he would make to the agency if he were in charge. Jenny, his first wife, had been enthusiastically in support of his ambitions and aided and abetted them with formal dinners featuring movers and shakers, luncheons with their spouses, and letters of support to legislators who ran on law-and-order platforms. She’d named Charlie after Liam’s father and made sure to mention Charlie’s grandfather and namesake, Air Force Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell, to every soldier and airman she met who was stationed at JBER. She had been the perfect partner for that Liam.

  This Liam, not so much. He wondered if Jim was right and he should pull the plug, or at least start planning for it. State troopers were well paid and the time he had served in the Bush would amp up his pension admirably, and he was pretty sure Wy still had the first dime she’d ever made. They wouldn’t be rich but they would be comfortable. He could learn how to hunt and fish, fill the freezer every year. Maybe travel some. He hadn’t been out of the country since college.

  God, that sounded boring. He wondered what Wy was doing, and what she was wearing, and how quickly he could get her out of it that evening.

  They had woken up that morning to make love, do form on their new deck, showered together, made pancakes and eaten them together, and he’d left her reluctantly when it was time to go to work. But then that was always
the case. She had disappeared out of his life once. He didn’t ever want that to happen again, and some part of him lived in fear that she would.

  The window was open and a mild, cool breeze carried in the scents of autumn, woodsmoke, unpicked berries rotting on the vine, fallen leaves decomposing. He heard a noise like the sound of someone knocking on a metal door. He looked around to meet the beady black eyes of a huge raven sitting on a spruce bough almost exactly level with his gaze.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  “Kraaaack—kraaaaaaaack,” the raven said.

  The bird wore coal-colored feathers that looked as if they’d been oiled. He was at minimum two and a half feet beak to tail and had fed well enough this past summer that he significantly bent the branch he was sitting on.

  “I thought I left you behind,” Liam said. “Like a long fucking way behind. Like far enough behind I wouldn’t have to put up with you anymore.”

  “Koo-kluck-kluck-kloo-kluck,” quoth the raven.

  “Do it to me again and again” Donna Summer sang behind him.

  “Kraaack!” With one beat of his iridescent wings the raven was aloft and gone.

  Liam spun around and picked up his phone. “Hey, Brillo.”

  “Yeah, yeah, happy fucking Monday to you, too, Campbell.”

  At least he wasn’t operating at a Barton decibel level today. “You have the results back from the DNA?”

  “Yeah, the kid is definitely Joshua Petroff.”

  “How soon can you release the body? His family wants him home.”

  “As soon as I sign off on the paperwork.”

  “Let me know and I’ll send Wy to pick him up.”

  “Yeah, listen, I got something else going on here. Something weird.”

  “Weird?”

  “Yeah, weird. As in freaky, creepy, spooky. Weird. I told you how the kid died, somebody bashed his head in.”

  “I remember.”

  “Yeah, well, I think the same weapon that killed the kid was used to kill Erik Berglund.”

  Liam sat up so fast he pushed himself away from the desk and banged off the windowsill behind him. “What?”

  “I told you, weird, right? There’s a kind of corner, almost but not quite a right angle to the impact depression in both of the skulls. I measured and it’s almost exactly the same size in both. It’s higher up on the kid and lower down on Berglund, but I’m pretty sure the same thing was used both times.”

  “You realize Joshua Petroff and Erik Berglund were killed thirty years apart?”

  Brillo sounded testy. “I can read a report.”

  “Are you sure the wound on Berglund’s head wasn’t from the old injury?”

  “What the hell, Campbell? I told you the old injury had healed to the point I could barely tell where it was, let alone what caused it. Oh, and if you could get your other girlfriend the hell out of my hair, I’d be grateful.”

  “My other—”

  “The scribbler. She’s been on me about this PM the whole goddamn week. She annoys me even more than you do and that’s saying something.” Brillo hung up.

  Liam let the phone drop into its cradle and picked his jaw up off the floor. He looked down at the square.

  Couldn’t get around without a cane.

  But Blue Jay Jefferson had been with him that night.

  As if Liam’s thought had conjured him out of the ether, the door to his office opened and Blue Jay Jefferson thumped in with his walker. He didn’t look happy. He was carrying Hilary Houten’s cane and he dropped it on Liam’s desk. It knocked the phone out of its cradle and then the entire phone crashed to the floor.

  Over his shoulder Ms. Petroff said, “I’m sorry, sir, I tried to stop him.”

  “It’s all right, Ms. Petroff. As you were.”

  She disappeared without closing the door.

  Liam picked up the phone and set it back on the desk. There was a chip out of the handset but there was still a dial tone. He put it back in its cradle and looked up. “You have something you want to tell me, Mr. Jefferson?”

  “I didn’t know about the kids,” Jefferson said, and sat down.

  “Hil came back across the Bay with me after the Chamber do,” Jefferson said. His face was set, his mouth a straight line.

  “That afternoon Garvey Halloran came over on his Bayliner. He’s a volunteer for the fire department, and he was there when you pulled that skeleton out of the cave.” Some emotion must have crossed Liam’s face because Jefferson snorted. “Garvey went to school with my kids. They’re all living Outside now so Garvey checks in on me. Since he’s a first responder, I get all the news first and firsthand. Ain’t no secrets in a small town.”

  There were no secrets in Alaska period, Liam thought. “Mr. Jefferson—”

  “It’s Tom,” Jefferson said. “That Blue Jay crap got hung on me by the newspapers, and it sure as hell ain’t Mr. Jefferson. Let me finish, Sergeant, and then I’ll answer any questions you got.” Jefferson thought about the ramifications of that all-encompassing statement for a moment and added, “Mostly.”

  “All right.”

  “So, Garvey told us about finding the skeleton.” Jeff shook his head and sighed. “I never see a man go so white. I don’t think Garvey noticed. Leastways he didn’t say anything. After Garvey left I tackled Hil about it. He wouldn’t say nothing at first. For days he was practically mute. I don’t think he was sleeping, like at all. Then last night I poured myself my usual sun over the yardarm tot and Hil asked me to pour him one, too.” Jefferson fixed Liam with a piercing yellow eye, his resemblance to a bald eagle even more pronounced. “Understand, Sergeant, I’ve known Hil for forty years and I never see him take a drink. He never said why, he just never did. I always figured him for an alkie, or maybe just a teetotaler.” He shrugged. “Didn’t matter to me. But last night he asks for a drink. So I pour him one and we sit down in front of the fireplace to plan out how to fix the world like we always do. He takes a gulp and his hand is shaking like a seven-point-four and he coughs and chokes and wheezes, and then by god, he takes another.

  “And then, Sergeant, he starts to talk.” Jefferson settled back in the chair, his face grim. “Only thing you gotta understand about Hil, Sergeant, is that paper he wrote forty years ago on human settlement in the Bay made him. He got wrote up everywhere, he was on television when most of the people watching couldn’t have understood one word in ten he said, he won some shovelbum award. They give him that.”

  He pointed at the cane. Liam followed his eyes and for the first time saw the tiny rectangle of brass screwed to the handle’s brace. It was inscribed with Houten’s name and a date and the words “For Distinguished Archeological Achievement.”

  “It never left his hand after that, whether his arthritis was giving him a bad time or not,” Jefferson said. “His reputation was made and all the resource companies wanted him on retainer for his bona fide expert opinion on how none of the places they wanted to dig or drill would have any impact on the Alaska Native culture or ever had any importance in Alaska Native history. He never had to do another lick of real work, just opine. Hil was fucking great with opinions that sounded authoritative enough to shut down every greenie and tree hugger who raised a voice in opposition.” He shook his head. “He was something back in the day, before he got old. Before we all got old.”

  “So when Erik Berglund came along this year, promising to refute all of Houten’s findings…”

  Jefferson gave a curt not. “I figured it was professional jealousy, and hell, look at the two of them. One was on his way out, old, obstinate, opinionated, had no truck with or respect for the Sugpiaq. The other grew up on the other side of the Bay smack damn in the middle of them, young, smart, familiar with all the new scientific techniques or what the fuck ever, had a relationship with UNESCO and was threatening to pitch them on making the Bay a World Heritage Site or some goddamn such.” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t think there’s a hope in hell of that ever happening and I don’t think Erik
did, either, but it’s what they was arguing about at Gabe’s party. Man was nice enough to give us a front row seat to the next blockbuster months before anyone else was going to get to see it and these two yahoos are ruining the party. I think Erik just wanted to poke the bear. They shut up when I went over to shut them up.”

  “And after the party?”

  Jefferson’s jaw tightened. “Hil wanted to wait for Erik to come out so he could finish the argument. Nothing I could say to talk him out of it. By the time Erik come out everyone else had gone. Hil got out of my pickup and started yelling. Erik laughed at him and turned his back and walked in the direction of the trail head. Hil went after him, thumping along with his cane. It was dark enough by then that I give it only a couple of minutes before I went after him. I found him standing alone at the trail head, leaning on that cane and vibrating like a shaker table on a gold dredge. Erik was nowhere to be seen. Hil said he’d gone down the trail, was going to sleep at the dig. So we went back to the harbor and bunked on my boat, and went home the next morning.”

  He looked at Liam, defiance in every line of his face. “You’ll notice I never told you about that when you asked what went on at the party.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Never would have, either.”

  “No.”

  Something about Liam’s certainty that Blue Jay Jefferson did not snitch on his friends seemed to put heart into the old fart. “And then last night,” he said, and stopped.

  “Houten started talking,” Liam said when it appeared Jefferson needed a prompt.

  Jefferson took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah. All about his fucking monograph and how Erik had been trying to ruin his reputation since he was a fat little brat.”

  Liam started putting the pieces together in his mind and almost knew what Jefferson was going to say next.

  “Hil found the cave thirty years ago. Just like Erik he figured out that the old folks used that spur of rock for a dock. He found the cave—he got around better back then—and he found the artifacts inside it.