by Неизвестный
Kris didn’t answer. She stood behind him, staring again at her half-hidden face reflected back at her from the window. What should she feel for the old man? What did he want from her? He hadn’t told her about Corvus or about his relationship with Evie. If she focused deeper into the night, she could see the outline of the shadowed side of her face. It’d hurt like it shouldn’t have hurt when he’d yelled at her and when he’d left her at the bottom of the staircase after their picnic.
What did she care?
“Earth to Kris.” Justin was looking up at her. “I said, what do you want to do now?”
“I know who signed his stubs.”
“You do?”
“A trapper named Ezekiel.”
“Is he over sixty-five? He’d be getting a Bonus then.”
“I don’t know. Probably; he was a friend of Ben’s. He used to trap near him.”
“Last name?”
Kris shook her head.
“Shouldn’t be too hard with a name like Ezekiel.”
Justin clacked away and Kris wandered into the next cubicle. A woman lived there. Pictures of daughters on a shelf. Cute. A couple of years younger than Kris. What had they seen? TV, supper every night, dancing lessons? Next to them was a picture of a bearded man, father probably. With two hands he was holding an enormous zucchini. There was a picture of a kitten on its back in a hammock with its paws in the air; next to it, a poem about feeling good. Who buys into that kind of shit?
Kris put her hands on the desk and slumped over it, her head sagging between her shoulders. She felt sick. Ben was right; it didn’t make a damn bit of difference that she’d found Evie’s killer; that he was dead; that she’d killed him. Evie was still rotting in a muddy grave.
What happens to her now? She goes back to L.A. and hopes no one finds Lambale’s body until the spring; until it’s been eaten by the ravens and the worms and there’s nothing left that can tie her to it? Will she sit alone in her room jumping every time the phone rings; every time there’s a knock on the door? Was running all she had left?
She glanced at the girls again. The pain of Ben’s anger cut into her and suddenly she realized that all she really wanted was to be part of something. A family, a home, a real mother. She slumped into the chair at the desk, feeling empty and exhausted; she’d been fighting for too long—thrown out into the world alone, with nothing to come back to, with nobody to stand by her.
Noises of books being closed and paper being shuffled came from Justin’s cubicle.
Ezekiel, Fairbanks, Corvus. Kris remembered the lock of hair and the birth certificate. She had a brother.
“There’re two Ezekiels in Fairbanks,” Justin called.
What happened to him? Did the State take him? Was he in a foster home? He’d be six now, six and a half. Justin called again. Slowly, Kris walked back to Justin’s cubicle. What kind of name was Corvus?
“This Ezekiel died in 2007, so he’s not our man.” He pointed to the computer. Screens vanished and new ones appeared. “This one’s alive. Ezekiel Damon. You wouldn’t believe the strange names you find in this program. According to this he was in Fairbanks all that winter.” Justin went back to the filing cabinets and pulled Ezekiel’s file. He opened it on his desk, shuffled through it until he found the green sheet of paper. He set it next to one of the forged signatures.
“What do you think?”
Kris examined the papers. There wasn’t much question; both signatures had the same anger in their heavy, crabbed lines.
“Do you have an address and phone number for him?”
“He has a box at the main PO in Fairbanks too. His residence address is on the Sixtymile, wherever that is; no phone number.”
“Sixtymile is a river. He doesn’t live there anymore.”
Justin looked through the paper file and clicked through the computer. “That’s all we got. But he’s still in Fairbanks; we processed his November stub last week.”
Kris pulled a piece of paper out of a pile and wrote out Ezekiel’s post office address. “I guess we’re done.”
“Yeah. Let me fire up Big Bruiser again and then we can get out of here.”
Kris waited for him by the front door. Corvus. Were his eyes blue like Ben’s? Could she get custody?
Justin pulled out his keys. “Boy, I’m hungry all over again.” He opened the door, locked it behind them, and they headed out.
“I’ve got to get back to the hostel. It’ll close soon.”
Justin slipped his fingers through hers and turned her wrist so she had to face him. “Spend the night with me?”
“I’m OK,” she said and pulled her hand away.
He raised a finger and touched her gently on the cheek. “Sure?”
It’s all they ever wanted. “Yeah, I’m sure.” Kris started down the corridor toward the landing dock forcing Justin to take a couple of quick steps to catch up with her. The door swept shut behind them. It was still snowing.
“Always snows in the middle of the week,” he said. “By the time us wage slaves get up on the mountain, the ‘boarders have shredded it. Not an inch of unmolested powder left. Come on then, I’ll walk you to the hostel.”
They stepped into the snow and walked along Fourth Street.
“So the noose is tightening.”
“What?”
“Around Ben. You know it’s got to be him. It’s always the person you suspect the least. He seems like such a nice old geezer when you first meet him.”
“It wasn’t him,” Kris said.
“Come on, who else could it be?” he asked, as they climbed over a high ridge of snow running down the center of Main Street that had been left by the plows.
“Don’t know.” She took a chance. “Loren Lambale, maybe.”
Justin grunted. “Not possible. Your mother was killed last Tuesday afternoon. That was the day the new AWARE wing was dedicated. It was his splash. He was the man. People and the press were fawning over him every minute of the day and at the party that night. He didn’t have a second to himself.”
Kris suddenly felt heavy as lead. It had to be Lambale. He raped her. He told me raped her.
Tuesday, November 17
“Kris. Morning. I tried to reach you at the hostel, but you’d already left.” Barrett watched her sit in his gray chair, wondering what’d brought her down to the station. “I wanted to ask you how your talk with Stewart went yesterday.”
“It didn’t.” She pulled her arms out of the parka and swept back her hair, hooking it behind her ears. Her chin lifted and she looked at him defiantly, like a teenager with a new nose ring facing down a parent. The bruises ringing her neck had faded to a duller blue; they didn’t look as ghastly as they had Sunday.
“I thought you went up.” When she’d raced out of his office after he’d shown her the birth certificate, he assumed she was going to confront Stewart. The evidence was closing in around Stewart; opportunity, motive—jealousy, Evie living with another man—circumstantial evidence, all Barrett lacked was placing him at the scene and the murder weapon.
“He hurt his back,” Kris said. “I tried to help him and he got all bent out of shape, so I left.”
“He’s in the hospital now.”
Kris looked surprised.
“I went up after you and found him on a mattress on the floor and called an ambulance.”
“He let you?”
“I didn’t give him a choice and he wasn’t in a position to stop me. But I couldn’t ask him any questions; he was too miserable and the ambulance crew got there too quickly. They packed him off to the hospital and I haven’t seen him since. I’ll drop by later this morning.”
Uncharacteristically, Kris dropped her eyes. His senses pricked alert; she seemed subdued this morning, this wasn’t Kris. Was she feeling betrayed? Had she been drawn to the old man and then felt deceived when she learned he hadn’t told her about his relationship with Evie? It’d be just like Barrett’s wife—there’d be a week of cold nights in bed whe
never she discovered he’d kept something from her.
“I came by to tell you I’m leaving for Fairbanks today,” Kris said.
“Fairbanks?” Barrett hadn’t expected this.
“To look for Corvus.”
“Kris, I’m sorry. He disappeared two years ago. I checked after the fax came in yesterday.”
Her face closed down.
“I called up to the Division of Family and Youth Services and had someone pull his file. She told me he’d disappeared so I called over to the Fairbanks PD. They had a file on him. In November of ‘13 a social worker from DFYS had notified the police that the boy was missing. Apparently he’d been missing for a week before she found out and called it in. The police investigated. They interviewed the neighbors, searched the area; but there were no leads and the case is still open.”
“And forgotten.”
“Yes.” When Barrett had been on the line with the social worker in Fairbanks, he asked her to pull Kris’s file too. It was thick and the woman only skimmed through it, reading him disconnected pieces over the phone: Father unknown, mother an alcoholic, Kris had twice been a ward of the state, in and out of foster homes, “uncontrollable” was the charge of most of the foster parents and after the last one the state gave up on her—another kid dropped through the cracks. But the record picked up again when she apparently moved back in with her mother, making Evie eligible for welfare again. Then a couple years later, she disappeared. There was a perfunctory investigation; but Alaska didn’t have a runaway law: it wasn’t illegal for a minor to leave home. And there’d been a handwritten note at the back of the file from a volunteer who’d known her from the children’s shelter. It’d told them to leave Kris alone, that it was time for her to leave and that she’d come back when she was ready to.
Kris broke into his thoughts. “I’ve got to be out at the airport in forty-five minutes.” She stood, lifting her parka off the chair, and began pushing her hands into the sleeves.
“Will you be back?” Barrett asked.
“Only because my flight to L.A. leaves from here.” She picked up her duffle.
“And your mother?”
“This is more important. Corvus might be alive.” She looked at him; daring him to deny it. Barrett kept quiet; she’d learn soon enough it wasn’t likely.
“OK,” he said. “How can I find you?”
“You have my L.A. address.” It was on her statement. Kris started for the door.
“Before you go.”
She turned, waiting. Her hair came loose from one ear and fanned across a cheek. Her eyes held his; black, somber and unafraid, her wildness simmering beneath this unexpected vulnerability. He didn’t want her vulnerable—vulnerabilities meant complications—he wanted her spitting, you didn’t feel so guilty afterwards.
“Loren Lambale didn’t come home last night.”
“So?”
“I thought you might have seen him.” Barrett didn’t think so; he was just covering the bases.
Kris almost smiled. “Did you try the AWARE shelter?”
“Why there?”
“Maybe his wife beat him.”
“I think this is serious,” Barrett said, watching the sparks come back into her eyes.
“He’s a white man. He can take care of himself.”
“He didn’t leave on any plane. There’ve been no ferries since he was last seen. He hasn’t used any of his credit cards since Monday morning and his car was found untouched in its parking space. There aren’t many places to hide in Juneau.”
Kris moved closer to his desk. “All this by nine o’clock in the morning?”
“It was only a couple of phone calls,” Barrett said, irritated that he sounded defensive.
“Right. The world stops for a rich fat man. And you haven’t a fucking clue who killed my mother.”
“We’ll find who killed her, Kris,” he said.
“Yeah. Like they found Corvus,” she said and left.
Barrett gazed out his open office door. She was right, Lambale’d become first priority—he was probably still alive. And Juneau would come apart when it learned he’d disappeared; the pressure to find him would be unremitting. Barrett toyed with the Abrams’s muzzle. There had to be a connection too, between Lambale’s disappearance and Evie’s murder. It was too coincidental for there not to be.
Barrett probed and tested theories until his mind began to wander. Kris’s mood had been strange this morning; subdued. Was it Ben or her mother’s murder catching up with her? Even though his wife had warned him that she wasn’t going to forgive another one, he was disappointed Kris was leaving town.
Suddenly his thoughts snagged. He frowned, looking at the dent Kris had put in his tank; then he pulled the phone in front of him, punched in the old 789-0600 number and, when the line was picked up, navigated through the voice mail until he found a human.
“Thank you for calling Alaska Airlines. This is Julie, how may I help you?”
“What is the price of an open round-trip ticket from Juneau to Fairbanks, if I want to leave today?”
Over the line, he heard her typing.
“Three hundred eighty-six dollars one way. It’s cheaper to buy two one-way tickets, sir, if you don’t know when you’re returning.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you for calling Ala—” Barrett disconnected.
Three hundred eighty-six dollars one way. Seven seventy-two round-trip. Plus expenses in Fairbanks. No way she had that kind of cash. Where the hell did she get it? From Justin?
Or Lambale?
__________
“You know it’s the end when they start hanging your history from the ceiling.”
Kris started in surprise. Leaning against the steel rail a few feet to her left was a man with a couple days of stubble on his face and a blond tangle of curls on his head. The curls bounced when he turned to look at her. He pointed a finger at the tiny airplane suspended from the ceiling with wires. “It’s a Jenny, first in Alaska. Ben Eielson flew it in the twenties until he was killed in a crash in Siberia. Back then you were living life. Now you’re just showing it off. Or selling it.
“Existential kiss of death. Money and tourists.”
Kris regarded him with disappointed surprise: Is this what Annie married? “Ringer?” she asked.
“Yup.” He stuck out his hand. It was big and meaty and pieces were missing from the ends of a few of his fingers. She hesitated before shaking it and he laughed. “Frostbite.” He examined her, his eyes as unrestrained as his hair. “So did I blow it? Are you a tourist? Not likely this time of year,” he said. “That first frost in August tends to run most of them out of state. Damn few left by November.” He smiled; his teeth were yellowed and chipped. “Used to work on the slope with a bubba named Raymond Abercrombie. First dust on the hills he’d be gone like sheet ice on a hot spring day. ‘Goose’s head ain’t no bigger’n a cotton boll and it knows enough to beat ass south before winter,’ he’d say.” Ringer was tall, ragged-looking, with a flannel shirt under his light parka and uninsulated leather boots which bunched up the cuffs of his jeans. A silver ring hung from an ear.
“Actually, you look local.” He leaned his forearms again on the railing of the balcony which looked out over the main concourse of the airport. “Annie didn’t tell me much; just to swing by and pick you up.”
“L.A.”
“Came up to cool off?” He looked at her over his shoulder; his hair bounced and he laughed again. “So you’re going to crash with us? Good,” he said without waiting for an answer. “Strays are our trade. A month ago the South Siders were up from Talkeetna and they camped out with us. There were bodies all over the table and on top of the kitchen counters. It’s pretty cool on the floor this time of year. They had a gig down at Chilkoots’s. And when they got back in the early a.m., they’d plug in an amp—you know, electricity is amazing stuff, we just jacked into the grid this summer: lights, I mean bright lights, regular radio, no more batteries crappi
ng out in the middle of a cut. Anyway, they’d play for hours. The kids loved it, though it was an unholy chore getting them on the school bus the next morning.” He paused, maybe to take a breath.
Kris shot for the crack. “Yeah, let’s go.” She picked up her duffle.
Ringer lifted himself off the railing and reached down for the mandolin case at his feet. “Can’t leave this in the truck,” he explained. “It’d crack in the cold.” Pasted on one side and cut to fit its curves was a bumper sticker that read, “Pot got more votes than Hickel.” Without checking to see if she was following, he headed down the stairs to the main floor of the terminal. “We’ll have a blast,” he said, loud enough for her to hear from five steps behind him. “The boys are charmers. They’ll get you laughing. You look like you could use a couple of good ones. Mama –”
Kris tuned him out. She was thirteen or fourteen when she’d last seen Annie Smythe. Annie used to come down to the shelter and play games with the kids. Somewhere in her thirties, she was sweet—not the sickly sweet of people who live in pink bubbles, who think that things are grand and will always work out—but a serious sweetness that believed what you were saying and didn’t try to talk the bad stuff away. She’d hug the kids who let her, laugh at jokes, never get too missionary about anything, and she’d lay into social workers who got picky about rules. She could beat the boys in anything—Monopoly, Risk, checkers, chess, most video games—without starting a fight. Kris didn’t play games, though sometimes she’d watch, and, when the games were over, if it weren’t too late Annie’d take her for hot chocolate down to Rexall’s where it was quieter and they could talk.
Because Annie was white, spoke well, and came from a good home, Kris never really trusted her, but she liked the attention she got from her. It was Annie who talked her into getting off the street and going back to Evie. She helped them find an apartment, taught Kris how to control their money; pay the rent first, then worry about heat, food and everything else. But after Kris settled in with Evie, Annie got caught up in other things—school or something—and she didn’t come around much anymore. Kris shrugged her away: just someone else who’d blown through her life.
