“It’s cranked.”
“Okay, let’s get him back to camp.”
“Right.”
Ray heard the thing moan, a strange sound when experienced from within the beast.
There was no pain, yet. No more squeezing on his chest, just an ominous hum. He was obviously in the monster’s stomach. Still alive, he would be digested slowly, torturously. Ray begged death to take him.
Instead, the light returned. Opening his eyes, Ray found himself in bed somewhere. It wasn’t home. Wasn’t Grandfather’s place. It was … a hospital? A curtain attached to a curving metal channel in the roof surrounded his bed; between that, the chrome arms on the twin mattress, and the smell, it was a dead giveaway. At the bedside were a bank of monitors. A tiny screen displayed a green light that blinked in time with an electronic beep. There were wires attached to him, tubes stuck to his arm.
He tried to remember what had happened, why he required medical care, but couldn’t. He recalled the sea creature, the journey in the kayak, both vividly, as if they were actual memories. Yet before that … what?
A simple wiggle of his toes brought everything back. Electric pain ran up his calves, racing all the way to his buttocks. His toes felt like they had been severed, crushed, burned … frostbitten.
Ray was entertaining thoughts of tragedy, the idea that even amputated limbs offered ghost pain for a while, when he heard the door open, close, then the curtain was ripped back. A woman stood there, her face to a clipboard as she wrote something. She was young, with short brown hair and a stern, businesslike expression.
When she finally looked up, she flinched, obviously startled. “You’re awake!”
Ray nodded at her.
“How do you feel?”
“Like I was mauled by a polar bear.”
“How are your fingers?” she asked, examining them. “Can you bend them for me?”
Ray made a fist with one hand, then the other. The skin stung as it tightened around his knuckles.
“Good.” The woman sounded like a kindergarten teacher praising a five-year-old. She scribbled something on the clipboard, then, “Let’s have a look at your feet.” The sheet was whisked back.
“So they’re still there?” Ray raised up and stared down the bed. His feet were tinted gray near the toes with ragged, blistering skin. They were ugly, but at least they were still connected to his legs.
“You’re lucky,” the woman announced, leaning to examine them. “You only froze the epidermis. The subcutaneous tissue was still in good shape.”
“Meaning? …”
“The skin will peel. Your toes will be painful for a couple of weeks. They might bother you a little, you know, burn some the next time you’re out in the cold. But otherwise—”
“I can walk?”
“Sure. It’ll sting, but you can walk.” She paused to check the monitors. “You’re doing fine. You were dehydrated. We pumped you full of fluids. Gave you a few mild pain meds. A good night’s rest and you won’t be much worse for the wear.” She looked at him, smiling for the first time.
“Thanks, doctor.”
“Nurse,” she corrected. “We don’t have a doc in camp. When somebody needs serious medical attention, we send them to Anchorage. I’m just here to take care of the scratches and sniffles.”
“Well, thanks for your help.”
She nodded, absentmindedly, her attention on the clipboard. “Since you’re awake, let me go ahead and get some information for your chart. We have to file everything with our insurance provider. Let’s see … You’re name is Raymond Attla. Uh … age?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Employer?”
“North Slope Borough, Barrow Police Department.”
The nurse recorded this dutifully. “Are you contracting with Davis?”
“No.”
“Social security number?”
Ray recited it, wondering why that was necessary.
“Religious preference … Catholic.” She checked it off with her pencil.
“Catholic?”
“You are Catholic, aren’t you?”
Ray shook his head. “No.”
She took a step toward him, a hand reaching for his ponytail. “Then what’s this?”
“What’s what?” Ray craned his neck to see. Just below the elastic keeper was a silver icon: a thin, two-inch vertical shaft, a thin one-inch horizontal piece, a shrunken sculpture of a human body attached to the bars. Its tiny arms were outstretched, legs bent at the knees, feet stuck to the vertical piece with a miniature nail. Upon the head was a crown of sharp prongs. The expression on the face, though drawn in silver and almost too small to appreciate, was one of agony.
“Maniilaq …” he muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Someone gave it to me.”
The nurse released it and returned her attention to the clipboard. “Okay, then … Religious preference?”
“What are the choices?”
“Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Moslem—”
“How about none of the above?”
“Fine.”
“Name of a relative or friend to be notified in the event of an emergency?”
“My grandfather, Charles Attla.”
The nurse noted this. “Phone number?”
“He doesn’t have a phone. You’d have to contact him through the Foxglove family in Nuiqsut, by radio.”
The nurse nodded at this, writing. “What’s your insurance?”
“Group Care.”
“OK, I can get the rest of the details from you tomorrow.”
“I might not be here tomorrow. I’m on a case and I’ll be—”
“You’ll be in this bed for the next twelve hours.”
“But you said I was okay.”
“Right now you are. But if there are any problems, they’ll probably occur in the next twelve hours.”
“Listen, you don’t understand. I have to …”
She shook her head at him. “It’s not open to debate, Officer Attla. I may not be a doc, but this is my infirmary. I call the shots. And sleep is what I’m prescribing for you. We’ll see how you’re doing in the morning.”
“Can you at least get me a phone. I need to make some calls.”
“In the morning.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “Okay?”
“Okay …” Ray groaned.
The nurse grinned victoriously, then turned to leave. “Push the call button on the bed control if you need me.” The door swung open, swung shut, and Ray was alone.
He glanced at the closet. His clothes were probably in there. The tubes in his arm could be easily detached. Escape would be simple enough. His toes and fingertips were victims of a dull, smoldering fire, but it was nothing he couldn’t endure.
On the other hand, he was tired. Not just tired. Depleted. Exhausted. Even if he hadn’t been bashed in the head by an automotive winch and nearly turned into a popsicle, his body would still have been begging for rest.
Would the investigation fall apart, as if it hadn’t already, if he crashed for a few hours? He could call the captain in the morning, call Margaret, talk to Billy Bob and Reynolds, examine the case with a fresh mind, from a sane perspective.
Turning a control dial, he watched the lights dim. After repositioning himself in bed, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Maybe the nurse was right. Maybe sleep was the best medicine.
A pleasant sense of contentment washed over him as his muscles relaxed. He felt himself sinking into the soft warm mattress, his mind rapidly descending toward slumber. Just before the world evaporated, he was struck by a thought. Why did it take a near-death experience and a hard-nosed nurse to convince him to take time out?
The questions hovered and drifted like wistful clouds before fading into a heavy, dark horizon. Oblivion. Relief.
TWENTY-TWO
“THE HOLY MOTHER musta been lookin’ out fer ‘em.”
Ray opened his eyes and gazed up at a face. It was long, cartoonish,
with two enormous buck teeth. For an instant he wondered if he were dreaming: a nightmarish vision of what it would be like to be trapped in a Warner Brothers short.
“And all the angels,” another voice added. Ray swung his head to the right. It was Reynolds.
“Holy who?” Ray whispered. His mouth was dry, his throat sore. He licked at chapped, cracked lips with a thick tongue.
“Musta said a whole heap a Hail Marys,” the cowboy surmised.
Ray found a cup of water on the table by the bed, downed it, then asked, “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not much for religion,” Reynolds confessed, “but this is, I don’t know … weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“The fact that you aren’t dead,” Reynolds replied. “The fact that we found you.” He shook his head at Ray. “I’ve never been sure about God and all that. But either this is a miracle or it’s the darnedest coincidence I ever did see.”
“Coincidence?” Ray shut his eyes and gave them a rub. He felt rested, sort of, but his headache was back and he was somewhat disoriented, as if he had just woken up from a decades-long nap.
“Yeah. The deputy knowing that you were in trouble.” Here Reynolds actually cursed to punctuate his amazement. “And knowing where to look … Weird.” Ray squinted at Billy Bob.
“We were driving back from the rig—” Billy Bob started to say.
“Driscoll,” Ray remembered. “Did you get a look at the body? What happened to him?”
Reynolds stopped him with a raised palm. “We’ll get to that. First, you gotta listen to this.”
“We were driving back from the rig,” Billy Bob repeated, “and I fell asleep.”
“Just nodded off,” Reynolds threw in, shaking his head.
“I was beat. Couldn’t stay awake to save my life. Anyway, I had a dream that—”
“Listen to this part,” Reynolds emphasized. “It’s weird.”
“I dreamed that you was out in this boat.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Kind of a … I don’t know. Like a can-oo. One of them one-man jobs that’re covered on the top, ‘cept for a hole ya climb in.”
“A kayak?” Ray asked.
“Right! That was eatin’ at me all night. I couldn’t remember what it was called. So you’re in this here kayak, out on the water someplace. Maybe on the ocean. I’m not sure. It’s night. Real dark, ‘cept fer a light way over on the—”
“Horizon?”
“Yeah.”
A shiver ran up and down Ray’s spine as his own dream came back to him in flashes.
“You were paddlin’ toward the light when this … this thang comes up to yer boat.”
“Some kind of monster,” Reynolds said with a shrug.
“Real ugly. Green with lots a teeth, lots a legs, and these … antennae thangs.”
Ray stared at them, dumbfounded. “What happened next?”
“The monster thang attacked you,” Billy Bob reported. “It grabbed ya and started to eat ya, boat and all.”
“And? …”
“And then I woke up.”
“Weird,” Reynolds muttered. “Tell him the rest.”
“Well, after I woke up, I had this picture in ma mind. It was a map of the Slope and there was this flashing dot on it. Somehow I knew that was where you were and that you needed help.”
“I thought he was nuts,” Reynolds confessed. “Certifiable. Goofy as they come. He kept on insisting that we go looking for this dot that was flashing in his head.”
“As it turned out, you was right where I thought you’d be,” Billy Bob submitted. “In a drift, a couple a miles from BP.” His eyes grew wide. “I cain’t explain it.”
“Weird,” Reynolds repeated.
“You bein’ a Catholic an all, maybe it was the Holy Mother watchin’ out for ya.”
“I’m not Catholic,” Ray corrected.
“What about …?”
Ray reached up and grabbed his ponytail. “This?” He flashed the crucifix at them. “It was a gift. From the shaman.”
“Weirder still,” Reynolds announced.
The three of them stared at each other for several seconds. Reynolds was right, Ray decided. It was weird. Apparently, some Great Kila really was looking after him. Either that, or he was one lucky guy.
“What time is it?”
Reynolds and Billy Bob performed identical maneuvers with their left arms, heads drooping toward their watches.
“Almost nine A.M.,” Reynolds got off first. “Six till,” the deputy specified. “What day is it?”
“Sunday,” Reynolds told him with a smirk.
“I need to get up.” Ray raised himself to a sitting position. He felt okay, though he was making a conscious effort not to move his toes or fingers. “My clothes in there?” He nodded at the closet.
Billy Bob opened the door. “Uh-huh.”
“Help me up.” He looked to Reynolds, who offered an arm. Ray slid his legs over the edge of the bed. So far so good. It was as his feet made contact with the floor that he realized he wouldn’t be running any marathons in the near future. The pain was harsh, intense … unbearable?
He was weighing the punishment., considering climbing back into bed when the nurse came through the door.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Reynolds and Billy Bob instinctively stepped backwards, away from the confrontation.
“I’m … uh …” Ray could feel his cheeks blushing. “I’m getting up.”
“Who said you could get up?” The nurse’s hands were on her hips, feet shoulder width apart, a deep scowl pasted on her face.
“You told me to stay in bed,” Ray argued. “I did, and I feel better for it. Now, I’ve got work to do.” He stood up, shrugged, held out his hands. “See, I’m fine.”
“You’re either a quick healer or you’ve got one heck of a high threshold for pain.”
Both, Ray thought.
The nurse nudged him back to the bed with a bony finger. “Let me check your vitals.”
Ray waited as she looked at the monitors, stuck a digital thermometer in his ear, took his pulse …
“Healthy as a horse,” she announced begrudgingly. “And lucky as they come.”
“So I can go?”
“I suppose. But stay off your feet. Walking will be painful for a week or so and could build up extra scar tissue. Trust me, you don’t want that. When you get back to Barrow, see a doctor. You may need some rehab therapy.”
“Okay.”
“That’s a prescription-strength painkiller,” she said, gesturing to a plastic bottle on the table. “I’d encourage you to take some right away.” She offered something approaching a smile before leaving. When she was gone, Ray tried standing again. Blood rushed to his injured feet, bringing tears to his eyes. Hopefully the meds would reduce the discomfort to an acceptable level. He reached for the bottle and fought with the lid, doing his best to avoid using his fingertips. Pouring out three tablets, he swallowed them without water.
“Maybe ya should rest,” Billy Bob suggested.
Ray ignored him. After struggling awkwardly into his long johns, he said, “Tell me about Driscoll.”
“Not much to tell,” Reynolds replied. “Bullet through the heart. Dead before he knew what hit him.”
“And he was missin’ that thang under his tongue,” Billy Bob added.
“The worm?”
“Yeah. Just like the first body.”
Ray thought about this as he pulled on another layer of clothing. Two men dead. Both treated with a reverence normally reserved for animals.
“Where’s the body?” he asked.
“Out in a shed,” Reynolds reported.
“Is someone watching it?” Ray carefully began threading his swollen toes into a sock.
“Yep. We’ve got a man posted around the clock to make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Good.” Ray grimaced, amazed that socks could sting with such authority. “Anybod
y see anything?”
“Nope,” Billy Bob grunted. “Driscoll was at the rig. He left fer the shop. Nobody seen ‘em again till two fellas went to do an ice sample and nearly ran over him with a pickup.”
Ray sighed at this. Another dead end. He was tempted to ask, out of sheer frustration, how someone could kill two men without so much as a whisper, but he knew the answer. Up here on the Slope in this weather, a battalion of Russian troops could have landed and set up a command post without being noticed. It was the perfect place, the perfect season for murder. A terrible, nearly impossible setting to attempt to track and apprehend the perpetrator.
“What about my machine?”
“I sent Leeland out to look for it a little while ago.” “No. I mean, any idea who might have ripped off my gear and tampered with the engine?” “Ripped off your gear?”
“What did you think I was doing out there, stretching my legs?”
“You sayin’ somebody … that you was stranded on purpose?” Billy Bob stuttered.
“Yeah. The Polaris is new. It’s fitted out with the whole array of cold-weather adaptations. The carburetor wouldn’t go out twice, in one day.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Reynolds submitted.
“And I suppose my survival kit and tools just jumped out of the sled of their own accord.”
“Maybe they blew out?”
“Yeah, right. More like someone wants me dead.”
Billy Bob and Reynolds stared at him soberly.
“Dead?” Reynolds finally said. His face contorted, as if this was beyond the realm of possibility. “Why? Why would someone want you dead?”
Ray flung his hands into the air. “No idea. Maybe the murderer thinks we’re closing in on him. Although that’s pretty far-fetched, since we’re stuck at square one. Or maybe someone just has a problem with Natives in general. Who knows?”
“Trying to kill a police officer …” Reynolds muttered. “That’s crazy.”
“I agree,” Ray nodded. He slid a foot into one of the bunny boots. Stars closed in on his field of vision. He sank to the bed and put his head between his knees, waiting for the fainting spell to pass, for the room to reappear.
“You okay?” the deputy asked, his drawl laced with concern.
“Yeah.” The sparkles slowly dissipated. Ray put the other boot on while still sitting on the bed. It hurt but didn’t make him dizzy.
Elements of Kill Page 18
