Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 06 - Icy Clutches

by Icy Clutches

  "Never arrive in a strange place at night on an empty stomach” had been Abe Goldstein's first rule to his class on anthropological field technique. “In the dark and with a low blood-sugar level, new places don't look so hot."

  Well, it wasn't quite dark, just midway through the long northern twilight, but it had been six hours since lunch, and Juneau, famed for its beauty, didn't look so hot.

  "Except for the concrete sidewalks,” Julie said, moving closer to him, “we could be in 1890.” She sounded a little low on blood sugar too.

  They had splurged on a reservation at the Baranof, Juneau's grand old dowager of a hotel, and their spirits lifted when they walked in. Burnished wood paneling, Art Deco light fixtures, gold-framed mirrors, oil paintings, a grand piano in the lobby.

  Civilization. Out of 1890 and into 1935.

  They checked in, went up to their room (with a Mozart horn concerto playing sweetly over the elevator speaker), washed up, and came back down to the Bubble Lounge for a drink. Their order for dry Manhattans, which seemed just the thing for 1935, was taken by a tuxedoed waiter who bowed when he received it.

  Julie laughed. “I was just thinking. This is exactly the kind of place John hates, isn't it?"

  "John hates any place where the waiters dress better than the customers."

  The amber drinks, in cut-glass cocktail glasses, were placed carefully on the table with another bow.

  "Getting back to Dr. Judd,” Julie said thoughtfully. “Suppose we change the premise just a little."

  "Fine. Did we have a premise?"

  "What if Judd didn't kill him before the avalanche, but after?"

  "After the avalanche?” Gideon looked up from his first swallow. It was all right, but it made him remember why dry Manhattans had gone out of fashion. “But Fisk would have been dead already."

  "Why would he have been dead already? Tremaine was in the avalanche and he wasn't dead. Maybe Judd went up there, and he found Fisk unconscious or dying, and finished him off with the ax.” She shook her head wonderingly. “What did I talk about before I met you?"

  "After the avalanche,” Gideon repeated slowly. “Now why didn't I think of that? Why didn't John?"

  She grinned, pleased. “You didn't?"

  "It never occurred to us. And it would answer a lot of questions. But—"

  "Ah,” she said sadly.

  "Well, there'd still be the question of why Tremaine kept it to himself all this time."

  "He wouldn't have known anything about it. He was probably unconscious. He fell into a crevasse, remember?"

  For a moment Gideon almost thought she had something. “No. Why bother to kill Tremaine now if he hadn't seen anything?"

  "Um. Yes, that's a problem. Maybe John can work that out."

  "And just what was Tremaine going to write about that was so sensational if he didn't know about the murder? Come to think of it, he did know about the murder because he mentioned it to his publisher."

  "Well,” Julie said glumly, “I don't see that you and John have come up with anything better."

  "You're sure right there,” he agreed, and took another pull, beginning to unwind.

  They went over the possibilities again: a jealous Steven Fisk as murderer, with James Pratt as victim; a brooding, vengeful Pratt as murderer, with Fisk as victim; a humiliated Judd as killer, with Fisk as victim—or maybe Pratt as victim. Just because no motive had come to light yet didn't mean there wasn't one. And of course, Tremaine as murderer, with either Fisk or Pratt as murderee.

  "A nice how-de-do,” he said.

  "And don't forget about Jocelyn Yount,” said Julie. “If she was as big as her sister she could have swung a pretty mean ax."

  "That's true. And yes, she was big. But why would she want to kill anybody?"

  "Because she was fed up. With a possessive, violent boyfriend on one side, and some creepy guy sniffing around her on the other, I wouldn't blame her. For being fed up, I mean."

  "It's possible,” Gideon said, for what felt like the fiftieth time that day. He rotated his glass slowly on the table. “We just need more data. We can't do any more with what we have."

  "You'll get it,” Julie said. “That's why we're here, right?"

  "That, and because I thought we could use a little vacation. From our vacation.” He was glad he'd asked her to come, glad to be off alone with her. He watched her sip her drink, watched her small, square, competent, sexy hands embrace the glass, looked at the moisture glistening on her lips.

  "Uh-oh,” Julie said.

  "What?"

  "I recognize that look,"

  "What look?” But of course she was right. “That's love,” he told her.

  "That is not love. I know love, and that isn't it."

  "Sure it is. Well, partly, it is.” He leaned closer. “Uh, I don't suppose I could interest you in some spousal activities before dinner?"

  "Actually I was thinking of taking a shower before dinner."

  "Gee, me too."

  "I suppose,” she said, “if we took one together it would save time."

  "And water,” Gideon pointed out.

  "Oh, well,” Julie said, pushing back her chair, “in that case..."

  * * * *

  "I don't know how much time we saved,” Julie said from the bathroom. She was still tinkering with her hair, which seemed somehow to have gotten wet under the shower spray.

  "I know we sure didn't save any soap,” Gideon said from the bedroom. “Or water, not that Juneau seems to have much of a water problem."

  "Is it still raining?"

  "I don't think so.” He walked to the window. “Nope, it stopped. Wow, look at this."

  She came to join him. “Wow,” she agreed.

  Their eighth-floor room looked out over the town and across Gastineau Channel. An enormous, midnight-blue cruise ship had just anchored; a sleek, stately five-decker with big, square, house-style windows instead of portholes. Four small launches were chugging steadily back and forth between ship and shore, depositing passengers onto the pier at the foot of Franklin Street.

  And Juneau was springing to life to greet them, like a mechanical toy that someone had just plugged in. They could almost hear the gears creaking into action. Franklin Street was going into motion as the advance troops from the ship made their way up it, tentatively and somewhat suspiciously. (Were they arriving on empty stomachs?) Lights were blinking on in the shops ("Gold Nugget Jewelry,” “Arctic Circle Gifts,” “Alaska Trading Post"), sidewalk tables were being set up outside of restaurants, and all of downtown suddenly seemed to be crackling with noise and life.

  Hokey, maybe, but cheerful and welcoming too. Even the mountain was starting to look friendly. They abandoned their plan to eat in the Baranof's sedate and elegant Gold Room and went back out into the now-bustling 1890s in search of typical Alaskan fare.

  * * * *

  They wound up at the Armadillo Tex-Mex Cafe on South Franklin, a steamy, funky, homey place with plastic red-and-white tablecloths, waitresses in jeans and aprons, and a stuffed, seven-foot-high saguaro cactus near the door. John would have loved it, they agreed.

  Over surprisingly good fajitas and beans (the owner turned out to be from Austin), they found themselves back on the same old subject without knowing how they got there.

  "I don't think we should completely forget about Tremaine,” Julie said. “Just because he got killed himself later on hardly proves he didn't do it."

  "So John pointed out. But why would he want to murder Pratt or Fisk?"

  "Pratt, I don't know. But didn't you say he was stealing Fisk's ideas? Maybe he thought if Steve was dead he could get away with it better."

  "Except that I don't see him planning to do something like that out on the glacier, with the other two around. No, this had to be a spur-of-the-moment thing."

  "Well, maybe it was. Maybe Tremaine did it after the avalanche. Maybe the other two were killed in it, and Steven was hurt, and Tremaine saw his chance and sort of nudged him
along."

  "Into the great beyond,” Gideon said. “Uh-uh. According to the newspaper, both of Tremaine's arms were broken. Plus a fractured skull and a broken leg and a few other little nuisances. He didn't hit anybody with an ice ax. Not after the avalanche."

  "Rats,” Julie said.

  Rats was right. The pieces just wouldn't go together to make a coherent picture. He no longer believed that Tremaine had been the murderer, as satisfying as that idea had been. Maybe he'd been an accomplice. Very likely a witness. Surely he'd known something about it, and he'd been killed on account of it. The Law of Interconnected Monkey Business so decreed. Or if not decreed, strongly suggested. So far so good, but right there was where things came unraveled. If not Tremaine, the killer had to have been one of the other people on the glacier. But they had all died. So who cared enough to kill him over it almost thirty years later? Who besides him could even know what had happened?

  Back to Judd? Judd, with his faked mosquito bite, lumbering after them over the glacier? Anna? Had Anna not spent the day on her frequency distributions after all, but hired her own plane, followed them out there...He shook his head. Every possibility was sillier than the one before. And more full of holes.

  "I wish,” he said with a sigh, “that we could Figure out who that skull fragment belongs to. It makes it just a little hard to solve a murder when you don't know who the victim is."

  "Will Professor Worriner be able to help, do you think?"

  "I hope so. All we can do is compare the new material to the fragments he identified as Pratt's and Fisk's back in 1964. With luck, we'll be able to make some kind of positive match. Or positively exclude one of them, which would be just as good."

  "You will,” Julie said. “I have every confidence."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 16

  * * * *

  Mr. Pratt, I'd like an answer.” John was nearing the end of the morning's interviews. He was getting tired. Too much information, too many unconnected pieces. And maybe a little too much breakfast. All those complex carbohydrates were sleep-inducing. Not to mention Gerald Pratt.

  Pratt was holding a match to his pipe, nodding to show an answer was somewhere along the way. In the meantime, he was sucking in great gulps of smoke and puffing them back out again like the old Camels sign on Times Square. Puh...puh...puh...

  Was he stalling? How could you tell? The gaunt, rawboned Pratt wasn't ever going to win any medals for speed. John glanced at Julian Minor in the chair at Pratt's left. Minor had his elbows on the arms of the chair, his hands resting lightly on his thighs, fingers splayed. Lips pursed, head bent, he was studying the perfect crescents at the ends of his flawlessly filed fingernails. One wing-tipped toe tapped noiselessly, discreetly, on the floor.

  If Pratt didn't say something pretty soon, they were all going to fall asleep.

  "Answer's no,” Pratt said.

  "No, what?” Jesus, what was the question?

  "No, I never heard Jimmy'd had any trouble with this Steve Fisk. Never heard he had any trouble with anybody."

  "He had some trouble with investors in Sea Resources."

  Pratt puffed tranquilly. “That,” he said, “was business."

  So it had been. Julian Minor had done his usual meticulous check on everyone involved, alive or dead, and had found that James Pratt had been more than a simple graduate student in 1960. It had been the time of the first great cholesterol scare, and Pratt had been involved in a dubious scheme to harvest kelp and process it into tablets that were supposed to lower blood cholesterol. Pratt and his partners, deeply in debt, were in hot water with creditors and investors. At the time of the survey they were being sued and were about to be investigated by both the IRS and the King County Prosecuting Attorney. Two years after Pratt's death, his partners, who had provided the capital (Pratt had supplied the botanical expertise), had paid backbreaking fines and gone to prison for three years.

  "Were you involved in Sea Resources yourself, Mr. Pratt?” John asked.

  "Not me. Jimmy was the businessman in the family."

  "I understand you fish for a living?” More of Julian's legwork.

  "That's right. Out of Ketchikan.” He rearranged his long frame in the chair, showing welcome signs of life. “Pink salmon, mostly. Sometimes a little chum. Got me a fiberglass work boat, thirty-four-footer, diesel powered, radio, radar, the whole shebang. Big power reel on the afterdeck with a couple of hydraulic gurdies. Rigged for gill netting and trolling both."

  John understood about four words of this, and not just because the pipe had remained between Pratt's teeth the whole time. But at least now he knew the guy was capable of stringing together more than two sentences in a row when he was talking about something that interested him.

  "No kidding,” John said.

  Pratt was encouraged by this show of interest. “Rigged to handle longline gear, comes to that,” he added with quiet pride. “For halibut. Brought in a 440-pounder off of Hoonah last year. Name's Inez." He removed the pipe. “The boat."

  "Mr. Pratt,” Minor said, restlessness spurring him to speech, “I'm given to understand you have the room next to Professor Tremaine's."

  "That's right.” He looked at the ceiling and ticked off names on his fingers. “Miz Yount, me, the professor, and Dr. Judd, all in a row. Don't know where the others are."

  "Did you hear anything unusual in Professor Tremaine's room last night?"

  "Unusual?"

  "Did you hear anything?"

  There was a long, long silence. “Well, I did hear some voices, now that I think about it."

  John and Minor both sat up. “Angry voices?” Minor asked. “Arguing?"

  "Just talking."

  "No other sounds?"

  "Not that I remember."

  "Did you recognize them?"

  "Well, sure, it was the professor."

  "By the professor, you mean Tremaine?"

  "Well, sure."

  "Who else?"

  "Just the professor."

  "You said ‘voices,” John said.

  Pratt took the pipe out of his mouth and blew smoke to one side. “Figure of speech. All I heard was the professor say hello. Must have said it to someone."

  Minor frowned. “You heard him say hello? The word ‘hello'?"

  "You got it. I was just going to the toilet, you know, before I went to bed, and I heard his voice through the wall. Made me jump because I thought someone was talking to me."

  "And nothing after the hello? No further sounds?” Pratt shrugged. “That's when I flushed the toilet."

  "What kind of hello?” John asked. “Loud, quiet, scared, friendly..."

  "Just plain hello.” Pratt sucked twice at the pipe while he sought further detail. “Pretty quiet, with kind of like a question mark at the end. You know, like, ‘Hello, is somebody there?’ Only all I heard him say was hello, because that's when I—"

  "Flushed the toilet,” John supplied.

  "You got it."

  "Did you hear anything before the hello?” John asked. “Any other sounds?"

  "No...well, yes, I heard his shower. Is that what you mean by sounds?"

  John thought this over. “You were able to hear a quiet hello over the sound of the shower? Maybe it wasn't so quiet."

  Pratt shook his head with relative vigor. “No, I'm telling this wrong. I was lying on the bed and I heard the professor's shower go off. The pipes make this noise-clunk-clunk—and that sort of woke me up out of a doze, and I figured it was time to call it a day. So “I went into the bathroom to take a pee and that's when I heard it: ‘Hello?"

  "How long after the shower went off?"

  "Maybe four, five minutes. Long enough to brush my teeth, wash my face, and take a pee."

  "About what time was this?"

  "Oh, maybe ten o'clock."

  Ten o'clock, the probable time of death. “Is there anything else you remember?” John asked. “Sounds of a scuffle? Maybe a door closing?"

 
Pratt smiled. “Nope. Tell you the truth, I didn't know I remembered this much till you fellas started asking."

  And that, despite further prodding by Minor, was all he had to say on the subject.

  "So tell me, Mr. Pratt,” John asked, “why are you here?"

  "Mm?” Pratt looked at him with renewed interest, his arms crossed, one hand holding the pipe to his mouth. “'Fraid I don't follow what you're after."

  John didn't know what he was after; only that Pratt was there in place of his sister, who had originally been invited by Javelin Press. And he just didn't seem the type to willingly spend a week sitting around indoors talking about a manuscript. Especially while the salmon were still running strong (which they were, according to Minor's thoroughgoing research). Javelin was picking up expenses, but that didn't make up for a week's lost income. And private fishermen didn't get paid-vacation time.

  "As I understand it,” John said, “the publishing company asked your sister, but you offered to come in her place. Why?"

  "Didn't offer. Eunice asked me to."

  "And why was that?"

  "Well,” Pratt said with a sigh, “Eunice isn't what she was. Just didn't think she was up to talking about Jimmy getting killed and all, so she asked me to come instead. So I did."

  "You gave up a week's fishing to be here?"

  "Yup."

  "Why? What did you hope to accomplish?"

  With the bit of his pipe Pratt slowly scratched his temple. “Danged if I know."

  That seemed to end that, at least for the time being. “And what about your brother? What was he doing here?"

  "My brother? I don't follow—"

  "In 1960. Why was he on the expedition?"

  "Oh. Something to do with his schoolwork, wasn't it?"

  "Yes, certainly,” Minor cut in impatiently, “but didn't it ever occur to you to wonder why he'd drop everything and agree to come way up here for the summer, when he was right in the middle of some major problems with his business?"

  Pratt looked at him thoughtfully. “Nope."

  "Well, why do you think he would?"

  "Hard to say. Jimmy was sort of deep, you know? Even as a kid, he always liked to get away from things and think ‘em through. I remember, where we grew up, in Sitka, there was this old tree house—old packing crate in a tree is what it was, must have been a million years old...well, what the hell.” He reinserted the pipe.