Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Dana Stabenow

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Jo said irritably.

  Wy frowned at the wall. “You sound funny.”

  Jo huffed out an aggravated breath. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Wy blinked. “Someone you want me to meet.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Now that she was listening for it, Wy could hear the self-consciousness and maybe even a little embarrassment in Jo’s voice. Tongue in cheek, she said, “Would this someone by any chance be, ah”-she paused delicately-“male?”

  “Kiss my ass,” Jo said, varying a theme.

  Wy grinned at the opposite wall, and waited.

  “Yeah, all right, it’s a guy.”

  “And you want me to meet him.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Have you taken him home yet, or am I the first test?”

  “Fuck you, Chouinard.”

  “I love you, too, Dunaway,” Wy purred. “By all means, put this paragon on the first available plane, and get on after him.” Voices came from the living room. How nice. Liam could have his ex-college roomie and main squeeze to stay, and she could have hers. One big, very full, deliriously happy house. “You’ll have to sleep on the couch.”

  “That’s where I slept last time,” Jo said.

  “Yeah, but this time it’s a full house. Tim’s up the river with Moses, and I’d let you have his room, but there’s somebody already in it.”

  “Who? Liam?”

  “Nope. One of your favorite people. Jim Wiley.”

  There was a long silence. Unlike Wy, Jo had actually met Jim Wiley. They both lived in Anchorage, not that big a town, and they were both involved in the information-gathering business, more or less. Her paper occasionally employed his services to track down subjects in cyberspace, something they both preferred to keep quiet. “Oh.”

  “And friend,” added Wy.

  “Oh.” Jo rallied. “Where from this time, Sri Lanka? Peru? Pago Pago?”

  “Ireland.”

  “Figures.” Another pause. “So, you need backup.”

  Wy peered around the corner to see Jim murmuring sweet nothings in Bridget’s ear. “It couldn’t hurt.”

  “See you tomorrow.” Click.

  She walked around the corner and hung up the phone. “It’s going to be a full house.”

  “I thought it already was,” Jim said.

  “Jo’s coming down for the Labor Day weekend.” She watched with interest as his eyes narrowed and his jaw set. Wy didn’t know what had happened between the two of them because Jo refused absolutely to discuss it. Other than inventing new and better invective to describe Mr. Wiley, his progenitors and his character. Well, this certainly promised to be one of the more interesting three-day weekends of the year. She smiled to herself, and added innocently, “You remember my friend Jo Dunaway, don’t you?”

  He reached for his wine and drained it with one gulp. “Sure. Jo Dunaway. Pudgy blonde. Nosy reporter type. I’ve had to work with her a couple of times. Definitely not a fun date.” He put his arms around Bridget and said brightly, “Now where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?”

  Wy hid a grin and went back to the sauce. It would be nice for Jim to have another moving target at which to aim over the weekend.

  It would be nice for her not to be the only target he was aiming at.

  At eight-thirty the roast was ready to come out of the oven, the potatoes were done, the salad was dressed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Bridget and Jim set the table while Wy stepped the sauce.“Beurre à montre la sauce,” she said. In answer to Bridget’s quizzical look, she added, “My friend Jo and I backpacked across Europe the year we graduated from college. In Paris we took a cooking class. Madame Claudine was delighted when she heard where we were from, and she made up this sauce for us to use on game. It’s dead easy, it just takes forever. You reduce the initial ingredients to a couple of tablespoons, and then use butter to step the sauce.Beurre à montre la sauce. ” She held out the spoon to Bridget first.

  “That is simply heavenly,” Bridget said.

  “Okay, you get to eat,” Wy said, and everyone laughed again.

  The door opened as they were sitting down and Liam walked in. “Sit, sit,” he said. “Jim, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Come to make your life a living hell,” Jim retorted. “You’ve had it too easy way too long. This is Bridget, a friend who is visiting from Ireland.”

  “Bridget.” Liam shook hands with Bridget, and put a hand on Wy’s shoulder. When she looked up he leaned down to kiss her. It flustered her, this casual demonstration of their relationship, and he knew it and grinned. “Yum, moose roast. No, keep eating, I’ll wash up and be with you in five.”

  When he reappeared, attired in jeans and a T-shirt, he took the seat across from Wy and filled a plate, ladling on the sauce with a lavish hand. “My favorite. My girl, I think I’ll keep her.”

  It was all so domestic that Wy expected the theme forThe Waltons to begin playing at any moment. She sniffed around the edges of the feeling, decided she could live with it, and joined in the general conversation. Jim was explaining how Bridget and he were both ham radio operators and how they’d met on the air a few months before.

  A few months? Wy thought. You’re a fast worker, Jim Wiley. As if he could read her mind, Liam winked at her.

  Bridget was a computer programmer for a software manufacturer-“We make the buttons work when you click on them”-and she had some amusing stories about people with new systems calling for help. “The first thing you tell them is, Check to see if it’s plugged in. You’d be amazed at how offended they get, and how frequently they don’t have the machine plugged in.”

  Liam told them about his week, beginning with the killing of the postmistress in Kagati Lake.

  Bridget seemed more interested in how he got to Kagati Lake than in what he found there. “Well, it’s not exactly the garda, now is it.” She caught Wy’s glance. “The garda are our local police,” she explained. “They get around on foot, or in cars.”

  “Not planes,” Liam said.

  “Not planes,” Bridget agreed.

  “I should move to Ireland,” Liam said ruefully, and in response to Bridget’s raised eyebrow said, “I hate to fly. We had to stop off at Nenevok Creek on the way back to Newenham. You should see the strip into that place.” He shuddered, a gesture not wholly feigned.

  “Why Nenevok Creek?” Wy said, thinking of Rebecca Hanover counting down to Labor Day and liberation.

  “Alaska Airlines picked up a Mayday from there and relayed it to us.”

  Wy put down her fork. “A Mayday from Nenevok Creek? Is that the Hanovers?”

  “You know them?”

  “I flew them in in May, and I’ve been doing supply runs in there all summer.”

  Liam considered. “How well did you know them?”

  Wy raised her shoulders in a slight shrug. “Not personally, it was business-wait a minute.” She stared hard at Liam. “Why are we speaking in the past tense?”

  He grimaced. “I’m sorry, Wy. Mark Hanover is dead.”

  “How?”

  “One shot, point-blank, from a shotgun.”

  “Who did it?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Where’s Rebecca?”

  “We don’t know that, either.”

  She was still for a moment. Jim and Bridget sat silent, listening. “Who made the distress call?”

  “That’s what’s weird,” Liam said. “We don’t know. Alaska Airlines one-three-three intercepted a Mayday from somebody who said they were at Nenevok Creek, that someone had been shot, and that they needed help. They didn’t identify themselves, and when we got there, all we found was Hanover’s body.”

  “And no Rebecca,” Wy said.

  “No. It could be that she saw it happen, that she ran for her life, and that she was too afraid to come out. We’ll go back in the morning, do a search of the area, see if we can’t pick up her tr
ail.”

  “You think it could be the same guy who shot Opal?” Wy said, echoing Prince’s words.

  “The postmistress in Kagati Lake,” Liam explained to Jim and Bridget. “She was killed the day before.” In answer to Wy’s question he shook his head. “It’s possible, but I don’t think so. That’s a long way to travel in a pretty short time. Guy’d have to be part mountain goat and part moose.”

  “He doesn’t have to be traveling on foot,” Jim said. “Too early for snowmobiles, but maybe a four-wheeler?”

  Liam shook his head again. “True, but the terrain is up and down a lot of mountains and over and around a lot of creeks and rivers between Kagati and Nenevok. It’d probably take him just as long to walk as ride. Plus, a different weapon was used the second time, too, although there’s no law says he has to use the same one twice.”

  He paused. “Wy, you said you felt sorry for Rebecca Hanover. Why?”

  Wy made a face. “From what I could see, her husband had the gold bug bad. She was the one who met the plane because he was always hip deep in the creek, washing that dirt. She seemed lonely.” Wy thought for a moment and added, “She seemed bored.”

  “Did she ever seem resentful?” Liam suggested. “Angry, maybe?”

  “No,” Wy said. “Like I said. Lonely. She looked tired every time I saw her, too, like she wasn’t used to doing without Chugach Electric.” She speared her last bite of moose with her fork and smeared up the last of the sauce, cooling now and a little congealed but still delicious.

  The fork paused halfway to her mouth. “Wait a minute,” she said, a sick feeling beginning in the pit of her stomach. “Nenevok Creek?”

  Liam looked at her, alert to the sense of strain in her voice. “Yeah. Nenevok Creek, or rather the airstrip about halfway between Nenevok Lake and Nuklunek Bluff. Why?”

  She put down the fork, rose to her feet and walked over to the wall map, tracing the same route Liam had the day before. She located the creek without difficulty, and estimated the distance between the airstrip at Nenevok Creek and the airstrip on Nuklunek Bluff at a little less than ten air miles. For someone hiking the same distance, say going from the bluff to the creek, he could follow a relatively easy slope down the bluff, wade through about a mile of swamp, the most difficult portion of the route, and then pick up the creek and follow it the rest of the way. The airstrip was right on the creek, and the gold mining camp was a two-minute walk from the airstrip. It wouldn’t have been a particularly difficult hike, especially if the hiker was someone who knew the area.

  Someone, say, like John Kvichak. Or Teddy Engebretsen.

  Wy thought back to the last trip she had made into Nuklunek that afternoon. John Kvichak had waited with the last of the moose meat, and had helped load it into the Cessna with swift efficiency. Wy couldn’t remember a time when John hadn’t had a smile and a joke ready to share. This afternoon, he’d been silent and serious. He had also been in a hurry, so much so that he’d dropped his pack when he went to put it into the airplane. The zipper of the flap pocket had been open, and out had spilled a copy ofRiders of the Purple Sage, a spoon smeared with peanut butter, and a cell phone.

  “Wy?”

  She turned and looked at Liam. “Can a cell phone on the ground raise a jet airplane at twenty thousand feet?”

  The three people at the table exchanged glances.

  “They’re always after making you turn the things off before they take off,” Bridget said.

  “Depends on what channel they’re both on,” Jim said. “If the communications man on the jet was channel-surfing and the guy on the ground was broadcasting steadily, probably. It’d be mostly a matter of chance, I think.”

  “There was that guy hunting caribou in Mulchatna,” Liam said.

  Jim snapped his fingers. “Right, I remember that story.”

  “Yeah,” said Liam, “he ground-looped it and an Alaska Airlines jet going to Gambell picked up his Mayday. It was in the paper.”

  The sick feeling in the pit of Wy’s stomach increased.

  “What’s bothering you, Wy?” Liam said. “You see something when you were out there today? Come on, I can use all the help I can get.”

  “Oh shit,” John Kvichak said when he opened the door.

  She was so beautiful, in her own way as beautiful as Elaine, so rounded and so feminine. She was frightened at first, of course, but as soon as she realized she had no choice, she calmed right down.

  Women were like that. They were a lot smarter than most men gave them credit for, they knew how to survive. They were the weaker sex, certainly, but that didn’t mean they were any less intelligent. She knew the instant she looked into his eyes what survival would entail.

  He had nothing but contempt for her husband. The cabin was poorly built, there wasn’t enough food to last more than a month, the man hadn’t done any hunting to take up the slack when the food ran out. A poor provider.

  And she didn’t weep when she saw her husband’s body. Her eyes were fixed on him. Poor little woman, she needed rescuing. Lucky for her he happened along.

  Or was it? Was it instead part of God’s holy plan? She was a gift to him as much as he was to her; could one argue with any conviction that such things were the product of simple fate? No, it could not be so. She was a gift, and he would guard her and treasure her accordingly.

  He told her that he was hungry. She cooked for him, noodles with green onions sliced into them at the last moment before serving and a few drops of sesame oil added, a dish new to him but which he liked very much. He said he was thirsty. She made him coffee, good coffee, too, the best he had had in many years.

  She fussed a little when it came time to take off her clothes, but that was only due to the natural modesty of women.

  She lay still beneath him, like Elaine, Elaine-fair, and kept her eyes closed, the way Elaine had at first. Her skin was so soft to the touch. He told her to open her eyes. They were so large, the pupils expanded almost to the edge of the blue irises. Her breath came in soft expulsions of air that touched his face in quick pants. Her hands lay at her sides until he told her to place them on his back. It was fine, so very fine, to be held within those arms again.

  She was weak and he was strong. It was his duty to protect her, it was her duty to submit. Where he led, she would follow. Their roles had been laid down by God and the Church many years ago.

  At last, at last, Elaine had come back to him.

  ELEVEN

  Newenham, September 3

  “Far as I know, they slept the night through,” Mamie said. “I wasn’t surprised, since they both smelled like they fell off the back of a beer truck when you hauled them in last night. And if you don’t mind, it’s about my bedtime now.”

  “Why did you switch to the night shift?” Prince asked.

  “It’s almost time for school to start. This way I’ll be awake in the morning to see the kids off.”

  Mamie Hagemeister was a short, very well-fleshed woman with bad skin and short, thin, fine brown hair that stood on end from its own self-generated static electricity. With her round, protuberant brown eyes, she looked like a long-haired koala plugged into a wall socket. She was also the single mother of five children ranging in age from three to ten, which explained her constantly harried air.

  She was the officer in charge of the local jail, one of the four officers belonging to the perpetually short-handed local police department Liam had met. “Any chance of seeing Raymo or Berg today?”

  She paused for a precious moment in her headlong flight. “I don’t think so. Roger’s still in Anchorage at that damn trial, and I just dispatched Cliff down to the harbor.”

  “What’s happening at the harbor?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? Somebody called and said Jeff Saltz was cutting his boat in half with a chain saw.”

  She said it nonchalantly, like cutting boats in half with chain saws was an everyday occurrence in the Newenham small-boat harbor. “I asked the guy,” Mamie said,
impatient to be gone, “I said to him, is he carving up anything besides his boat? Like a person? Guy said no. I said to the guy, then why do you need the cops?”

  “Why did he?”

  “The guy with the chain saw’s boat was tied to the boat belonging to the guy who called. Anyway, I told Cliff and Cliff went down to see what he could do.”

  “Mamie?” A voice came up the corridor.

  “You hush up, Lorne, I’m trying to get off shift here.” She jerked her chin in the voice’s direction. “Lorne Rapp. Roger brought him in at three-thirty for beating up on his family. Drunk and disorderly, and he tried, I say he tried, to assault an officer.”

  “I trust he didn’t get away with it,” Liam murmured.

  Mamie gave the trooper an indignant look. “Not on my shift he didn’t. He’s got a lump on his head the size of Gibraltar to remind him not to if he ever gets the yen again. The nerve!”

  Any woman who could single-handedly raise five children and still string words together in a coherent sentence commanded Liam’s respect and admiration, and he held the door for Mamie on her way out.

  “We want to talk to Engebretsen and Kvichak,” he told Nick Potts, a skinny young man who barely looked old enough to vote. Nick was working day shift. Nick didn’t look like he could punch his way out of a paper bag, let alone keep order among the Newenham criminal element. He knew this, and compensated by trying to grow a mustache, which after two months still looked like something applied with a number 2 pencil. “You want the interview room?”

  “Please,” Liam said. Prince smiled at the young man, who blushed hotly and dropped his keys.

  The interview room was a narrow rectangle with one barred window, a table and four chairs. Liam and Prince sat on one side, Teddy and John on the other.

  Teddy and John still smelled faintly of beer, but after a night in jail they were stone-cold sober. John was tight-lipped and angry, Teddy terrified. “You never charged us with anything,” John said. “You never even told us why you were locking us up.”