Broken Angels

by Неизвестный

  “…Niska reared up on her hind legs and”—Kris turned the page—“with a great heave against the traces, broke the sled out of the snow.” From the corners of her eyes, Kris saw each boy’s pajamaed legs lying motionless on the bed on either side of her. Looking up through her hair, which had fallen forward as she bent over the book, she saw Ringer and Annie in the kitchen, the light behind them. He was hugging her from the rear, his arms under hers, squeezing her breasts, his hands clasped above her crotch. He nuzzled her neck, and as she watched, Annie leaned her head back on his shoulder, her eyes closed.

  Kris dropped her eyes back to the page and searched for her place. Soft sucks and giggles came from the kitchen and she pressed her finger harder under each word that she read. “Niska raced the sled down the mountain trail. ‘Haw,’ cried…” Kris felt a silence, charged and electric, come from the kitchen. Lifting her eyes, she saw through her hair, Ringer and Annie, still in his arms, looking at her, their expressions sharp and intent, like a pair of dogs with ears pricked and senses alert to a movement across a field.

  What’s wrong now?

  Then Kris saw the three of them—she and the boys—stiff and apart, their backs against the wall like thugs in a line-up. She dropped her eyes; her legs were separated from theirs by acres of bedspread. They didn’t want to touch her. She found her place and continued reading, awkwardly now.

  A few pages later, Minto faded out and fell against her arm, breathing easily in little boy snuffles.

  She leaned into his slight weight.

  Wednesday, November 18

  Annie’s taillights ran like red eyes through the blackness ahead of her. It was still dark; the long subarctic dawn would not begin for another hour and the sun wouldn’t lift above the horizon until after eleven, three hours away. An overcast blanketed the winter sky and until it cleared off, it would stay warm, not dropping much below zero.

  Annie’s lights brightened and her turn signal flashed right. Kris slowed and signaled, although nobody was behind her. They had decided to give her the Subaru, since the truck was too cranky. It was a chore day at the cabin for Ringer, so he didn’t need a car. Annie had told Kris, as they’d walked out into the dark that morning that she could live without running water, but not without two cars. One car, she’d said, was life threatening—for Ringer. Time and space weren’t something he paid much attention to and she’d threatened to cut him up and feed him to Wally if he left her waiting once more on some frozen street corner. Ringer decided it was safer to buy a second car.

  Other taillights trickled in from side roads until they were part of a quickly flowing stream funneling into the city. Annie led her past the brilliant lights of the University atop a hill and then onto a highway that took them above the northern fringe of the town. Nothing looked familiar to Kris until she drove across the Chena River into downtown. The traffic moved fast and she caught only quick glimpses of the old buildings that she had grown up with, lit now by yellow lights. She quailed; she felt no thrill of returning home, of walking old streets and seeing forgotten friends. She gripped the steering wheel and concentrated on tracking Annie through the tangled traffic. Suddenly, she saw Annie’s arm wave briefly from the window and then her car disappeared in the stream of red lights.

  Kris drove on to the south end of the city to the Old Richardson Highway. The state office hadn’t moved since she’d last been there, waiting numbly in some line to fill out some form or to talk to some social worker who had already seen fifty hopeless cases that week and wasn’t much interested in hers. She scanned the directory for Family and Youth Services, punched the button in the elevator, and got out on the third floor. It hadn’t changed either. The same color, the same cubicles, packed in the same arrangement as when she’d last seen it. She stood in front of the receptionist’s desk until the woman looked up.

  “I’d like to see the supervisor.”

  “Supervisor? We usually have you go through an assessment first.”

  “I’m not here for services. I want to ask her some questions; it won’t take long.”

  The receptionist eyed her, then reached for her phone. “Your name?” she asked. Kris told her. She spoke into the phone and then pointed Kris between the cubicles toward an open office door. A gray-haired woman with wire-rimmed half-glasses turned away from her computer when she entered. Kris sat in a seat opposite her desk.

  “Kris? Joan Cranshaw. What can I do for you?”

  “I have a brother who was born in 2009 and who disappeared in 2013. I’m trying to find him. The police told me that DFYS has a file on him. I’d like to look at it and talk to his case worker.”

  “Those files are confidential.”

  “Even to family members?”

  “Siblings at least. The police never found him?”

  Kris shook her head.

  “Let me take a look. What was his name?”

  “Corvus Stewart.”

  “Corvus? Raven? Good Alaskan name.” She tapped in a number on her phone and asked the woman who answered to bring in Corvus’s file. When it came in, she paged through it carefully.

  “There’s no mention of a sister here,” she said, looking up.

  “I’d left home by then. You can pull my file, or my mother’s, if you want.”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Your brother’s case worker resigned a year ago,” she said. “To have a child. Which, given that she worked here, demonstrated an unwarranted faith in the world. You want to talk to her.” Cranshaw found the case worker’s number and tapped it into her phone. A couple minutes later, after a brief chat, she handed Kris a sheet with an address and a penciled map on it and said, “You can catch her this morning, she’ll be home until one.”

  Half an hour later, Kris pulled the Subaru into a neatly-plowed driveway on the north side of Chena Ridge. Gray had begun to infiltrate the morning darkness. She could see the shape of a house through a leafless stand of aspen and birch. There was no arctic entryway and the woman who opened the door recoiled as a wall of cold air forced its way into the house. Kris stepped in quickly and the woman pushed the door shut.

  “Hi, I’m Pat Shannon.”

  “Kris Gabriel.” They shook hands.

  “Evie’s daughter?”

  “You knew her?”

  “Of course. Come in. I’m sorry about what happened. I read about her death in the paper.”

  Kris hung her parka on a peg by the door.

  “Sit down. Would you like some tea or coffee?”

  Kris shook her head. Pat was short, with sandy hair and eyes that were used to watching. A stylized cross, slung from a gold chain, rested on her chest. She was overweight, her body bulged over its restraints—a bra strap and a belt cinched too tight. The living room had a white carpet, white walls, and sliding glass doors with white drapes. A fancy wood stove stood clean and unused on white tiles in the corner and Kris wondered how many cords of wood it would take to heat the house in the winter if the furnace went out. On the couch, wrapped in a blanket printed with cartoon characters, was a baby with a pacifier sticking in its mouth.

  Pat picked up the baby, and sat down.

  “Joan said you wanted to know about Corvus.”

  “I left home in 2006 and didn’t know my mother had had him until a couple of days ago. The police said he disappeared and was never found.”

  Pat pushed up the baby’s clothes and drew a circle with her fingernail around its dimpled bellybutton. It wiggled and made sucking noises around its pacifier. “I was assigned to Corvus because I specialize in FAS cases,” she said.

  Kris looked blank.

  “Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.”

  It didn’t help.

  “A woman who drinks during her pregnancy can cause acute neurological damage to her baby. That’s what happened to Corvus. He was severely mentally disabled. It wasn’t diagnosed until he was three because your mother had almost no post-natal care. But by then it was obvious that something was wrong. He had m
inimal language development, was two years late learning to walk, and had made no progress in toilet training.”

  Pat tickled her baby until it giggled and thrashed its arms and legs in impotent pleasure. It had good post-natal care.

  “FAS is a severe problem, especially in the villages. The percentages are scary. It can’t be cured, but there are programs adapted to FAS children that can help quite a bit; especially by taking some of the pressure off the parents. FAS children can be difficult to control and care for. I tried to convince Evie to get Corvus started in one, but she was resistant. So was her partner.” She paused.

  “Ben.”

  “That’s right, Ben Stewart. But for different reasons. Evie didn’t want to lose Corvus. I don’t think she trusted us. Stewart, I don’t know. It was like he’d given up, or lost interest.” Pat unbuttoned her blouse, pulled the pacifier out of the baby’s mouth, and levered a nipple into its mouth. It hadn’t even whimpered.

  “They were doing OK. Ben had a job and had gotten them off food stamps. He still got his Bonus, though. Funny how Alaskans think they are entitled to the PFD and Longevity Bonus, but that food stamps and welfare are government handouts and evidence of personal failure. Their apartment was pretty meager, but they were making the rent. And, as far as I could tell, Evie was sober. I don’t think Ben had a drinking problem.

  “It must have been about two years ago, I came by to check in on Corvus and he wasn’t there. Evie’s eyes were red and puffy. Ben sat in the corner with a face hard as stone. Corvus had been gone a week, and I think both of them had worn themselves out. I contacted the police and they spent another week interviewing people, organizing teams to search the patches of forest and the industrial sites in the neighborhood. The police didn’t find anything and eventually gave up. There was nothing else they could do.

  “Once Corvus was gone, I lost contact with Evie and Ben. But I heard through the grapevine that they’d split up and that Evie had started drinking again. It doesn’t take much to tumble a couple that’s just on the edge back into the hole. I was sorry, they were good people. They just weren’t capable of dealing with life’s blows.”

  Weren’t capable? Kris stood up. You and your kid wouldn’t last a day on the street.

  “Kris.” Pat rose too, her baby still nursing in her arms.

  Kris stared into the righteous light of Pat’s eyes and knew she was going to be given a Truth.

  “Kris, Corvus is dead. It’s been two years and his body’s never been found. He was utterly and absolutely incapable of caring for himself. If he had wandered outside, he would have died of exposure in an hour. Less. It snowed that week and the plows probably scooped him up and deposited him in the snow dump on the Chena. He would’ve washed down the river at breakup.”

  Kris let the car coast down off the ridge and then squashed her foot hard against the floor when the road flattened out on Chena Pump. The Subaru choked, backfired, then picked up speed. Chena Pump was arrow straight and she let the car race its headlights down it. She came to the Parks Highway and turned right, back toward town. At University Avenue she turned right again, slipping into the ceaseless traffic which she followed left onto Airport Way. A mile later, she turned left onto Barnette, hoping that the police station was still where she remembered it.

  It hadn’t moved; it looked the same as the last time she’d been there—bailing Evie out of a vagrancy charge. Kris left the car in the visitors’ parking lot and pushed through the doors. A woman working through a pile of yellow forms behind bulletproof glass glanced up as Kris approached.

  “May I help you?” Her voice came out of a mike. In the room behind her people were working at desks, talking on the phone and bunched up around the coffee machine.

  “Two years ago my brother disappeared. They never found him. I want to talk to the officer who worked on the case and look at the file.”

  The woman pulled a pad of post-its out from under the loose forms. “What was his name?”

  “Corvus Stewart.” Kris was surprised; she’d expected a fight.

  “Take a seat; it’ll take a few minutes to pull the file.”

  Kris sat down and waited.

  The door to the inner offices pulled open and a black policeman with a thick, liverish-brown face, grizzled hair, and a potbelly sagging over his belt came out with a manila folder in his hand.

  “Ms. Stewart? Hi, I’m Officer Hart.” He reached out his hand and wrapped it around hers, smiling. “Why don’t we find some place quiet?” He held the door open for her; then led her back to a small room with a table, worn and chipped chairs, and a blackboard. He offered her a seat and pulled out a chair next to hers, laying the folder between them.

  “I wasn’t on this case. The man who was is a lieutenant now and doesn’t get to do anything fun anymore. Since I’m only a traffic-cop, I get to talk to you.” He looked at her, eyes smiling above sagging, spotted cheeks, hoping for a smile from her. But a lifetime of bad cops hadn’t prepared her for a decent one, and she kept her face wooden. “If you have any questions I can’t answer after we’ve looked through this, I’ll get the lieutenant in here. All right?” He spoke easily, but earnestly, like he didn’t think that Kris was wasting his time.

  “OK.”

  “Why are you interested in this case now?” he asked, opening the file and pushing it in front of her. He smelled of tobacco.

  “I only learned I had a brother a couple of days ago.”

  “Really?” He picked up the top sheet. “Evie Gabriel? Is that your name, Gabriel not Stewart?”

  “Gabriel.”

  He handed her the sheet.

  “So you’re checking out your roots?”

  “I guess.”

  Hart let her read through the file. There were statements from Evie and Ben. Both said the same thing. On Friday, November 3, 2013, they had both gone to bed around ten. Kris had never seen her in bed that early unless she had a man on top of her. Corvus was asleep on the sofa in the front room. When Ben awoke at 6:30 for work the next morning the sofa was empty. They searched the apartment building, the neighborhood, and talked to the neighbors. No one had seen a thing. It had been about twenty below that day; but Corvus’s cold weather gear was still in the closet. When asked why they hadn’t gone to the police, Evie hadn’t responded, and Ben had said that he’d spent his life tracking; if he couldn’t find Corvus then the police couldn’t either. But Kris remembered him lying on the floor pissing in a bottle—more likely he wouldn’t have asked for help.

  There was a form for every person interviewed. Kris read the comments the neighbors had made about Evie and Ben. Evie’d apparently been sober. She doted on Corvus, but was an erratic mother, one minute hugging and kissing him and the next shaking and yelling at him. Ben was quiet and hard working, but, said one neighbor, maybe a little too distant and aloof, especially as Corvus got older. Uncertain of himself around the boy, another said. The boy cried often, sometimes for hours; Evie wouldn’t know what to do, and Ben would leave the house, not returning until late, when Corvus had exhausted himself.

  Hart showed her how to read the forensic reports, the fingerprint and fiber analyses and the reports made to the state police and the FBI’s missing persons bureau.

  “All routine,” he said, scanning the pages. “All dead ends.”

  Kris turned back to a sheet that had basic information about Ben and Evie. Evie’d been unemployed; Ben had been working full time at the Great Land Tannery. She borrowed Hart’s pen and wrote out its name and address on her palm.

  “All set?” he asked.

  Kris pushed herself away from the table.

  “Must have been pretty grim, losing a kid like that.” Hart sighed. “Anything you want to ask the lieutenant?”

  Kris shook her head.

  “I can’t think of anything either. It all looks pretty straightforward. Funny, though, they didn’t call the police right away. That could’ve made a difference.”

  “Do you know where this i
s?” Kris held out her palm with the address on it.

  “Placer Street? No. Let’s take a look at a map.”

  He gathered up the sheets and stuck them in the folder and led her back out to the front office. A large plastic map of the city hung on a wall. He ran his eyes down the index and then searched south of the city.

  “Here it is,” he said, tracing a thin black line with his finger.

  The sun was up when she came out of the police station. It was too low to the horizon to be seen over the buildings, but in its dull rays the overcast sky had turned gray-white. She drove over to Cushman, stopped at Foodland for some chips and Snickers before driving south into the industrial part of town. Down where she used to live. She slowed, looking for the street she’d last lived in; the yellowed, fog-bound street she’d walked out of nine years ago when she left Alaska. Different buildings lined it now and she’d cruised past before recognizing it. She pulled into the parking lot of a pawnshop and picked at the cracked vinyl dash of the Subaru debating whether to go back. Without being aware of having made a decision, she put the car in reverse, backed out of the parking lot, and continued south.

  So Ben and Evie had been together for four years. It’d be the longest Evie’d ever been with the same man. But Kris could see it in Ben—the patience, the self-sufficiency that Evie needed. Maybe even the love. And Ben sobered her up; maybe all she needed to stop drinking was a stable man. Did they split up because Corvus disappeared? It was probably his son that had kept Ben in the relationship; when Corvus was gone, there was no reason to stay.

  The Subaru rattled loudly over ridges of ice frozen to the asphalt and Kris tightened her grip on the wheel until the street cleared. And then a chill settled in her belly. Maybe Evie left him. Maybe Ben followed her to Juneau. Maybe he did kill her because she’d moved in with another man. Maybe Justin was right.

  Suddenly she couldn’t think and she let the Subaru drive itself while scattered facts and thoughts whirled in her head until she remembered the wool fibers on the bushes and came back to Lambale. Ben couldn’t have done it. Evie’s murderer lay half way down a cliff wrapped around a tree. It had to be Lambale.