Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Dana Stabenow

  She came home from the University of Washington with a B.A. in criminal justice, and filled out her application for the trooper academy the next day.

  The academy was notoriously picky in its selection of recruits, thanks to the state’s munificent endowment of troopers’ salaries, but they took one look at Diana’s sex, citizenship and degree and snapped her up. She graduated at the top of her class, and at the graduation ceremony recited the short, simple oath of the Alaska State Troopers with the absolute conviction that she was going to be the best trooper who ever was, with the highest conviction rate and the lowest percentage of citizen complaints in the history of the service. She would serve, she would protect, and before long, she knew in her secret heart, she would be running the joint.

  Her first assignment after her probationary period had been Newenham, where she’d arrived a little over two months before. Newenham, in spite of it being a seven-step pay increase because of its Bush location, was not first pick on anyone’s list. The sergeant in charge before Corporal Campbell had been that unusual individual, a careless trooper: careless of the law, careless of the safety and security of his community and, most unforgivably, careless of the reputation of the service. He had been loathed from Togiak to Igiugik, he had been despised by fellow and superior officers alike, and if he hadn’t been a former governor’s brother-in-law, he would never have lasted as long as he did. As it was, he’d only been transferred, taking his problems with him to Eagle River, where at least he would be answerable to an on-the-scene authority other than himself, and where everyone prayed he wouldn’t screw up for the next year, after which he became eligible for retirement.

  Into this mess stepped Liam Campbell, recently broken in rank and transferred in disgrace because of an error in judgment that had left five people dead in Denali Park. The way Prince heard it, it hadn’t been Campbell’s fault, but he’d been the sergeant in charge of the post and the buck stopped on his desk. Up to then, his record had been exemplary. He’d been John Dillinger Barton’s golden boy, and the smart money had him moving up the chain of command high and fast.

  Instead, he got Newenham, a fishing community of two thousand at the end of an hour’s ride by 737, on the edge of Bristol Bay, which had once seen the largest runs of salmon in the world, where fortunes had been made in the set of one net. Now, the salmon were returning in ever-dwindling numbers, incomes were falling, and alcohol consumption was on the rise. There were foreign vessels docking now and then for supplies, there was tension between the white and Native communities, there was tension between all Alaskans and the state and federal governments. It was a community ripe with possibilities. Diana had taken a long, hard look at Liam’s record, made a few discreet inquiries and had liked what she had learned. She sensed an opportunity to pile up numbers in the “Cases Closed” column and expressed a preference for a duty assignment in Newenham, knowing full well she would get it by default.

  When she and Liam were done with it, Newenham would be first on everybody’s list.

  All of which explained why she was on the phone to the Crime Lab in Anchorage that day three times before noon. Tired of talking to her, the receptionist finally gave her the direct line to the ballistics lab. An anonymous tech was brusque and uncommunicative. She called again in an hour and he hung up on her.

  She called the medical examiner, one Dr. Hans Brilleaux, known less than affectionately to the law enforcement community as Brillo, for his Brillo-pad hair, a black, wiry nest that looked like it could provide houseroom for a flock of swallows. It smelled like it, too.

  Brillo was less than enthusiastic. “I’ve got four stiffs ahead of yours,” he said in answer to her query, and then he hung up on her, which seemed to be the day’s universal response.

  She drummed her fingers impatiently on the desk. Until the autopsy came in, she would have nothing comparing the pattern of buckshot to the patterns Teddy and John’s shotguns had presumably produced for the Crime Lab, so she went down to Bill’s for a fat pill. Dottie and Paul Takak were dispensing comfort in the form of bacon cheeseburgers and fountain Cokes. Dottie, a Yupik elder and a pillar of the local Native community, sat in back of the bar, arms folded, and refused to serve any Yupik customers alcohol. In the kitchen, Paul put ketchup on every burger, whether you wanted it or not. Sighing inwardly, Diana opened up her burger to scrape the layer of red sauce away. Life in Newenham went to hell with Bill and Moses both gone.

  This thought had the effect of drawing her up short. She was thinking about Newenham as if it were home, instead of a stepping stone. This would never do.

  She wiped her mouth and turned to survey the bar in search of miscreants. Evan Gray, one of three local drug dealers, held court in a back booth. He saw her looking at him and sent her an impudent grin. He was a tall, good-looking devil, and he knew it.

  Two months before Diana had sat in that same booth with Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell of the United States Air Force, and, coincidentally, Corporal Liam Campbell’s father. The two men didn’t get along. She smiled to herself. It wasn’t that Charles was incapable of getting along with anyone, as she had extensive personal knowledge that he could.

  Across the room, Evan Gray mistook the smile and excused himself to the plump little brunette sitting within the curve of his arm. She pouted as he sauntered to the bar and ordered another round for his booth. He smiled at Diana. “Hey, beautiful.”

  “Hey, handsome,” she replied.

  Gratified, he said, “Join us for a drink when you get off duty?”

  She smiled at him. “Not in this lifetime, Evan.”

  He laughed. “Haven’t you heard? Marijuana is legal in the state again.”

  “Haven’t you heard?” she countered. “Only for medicinal purposes.”

  He shook his head, smile in place. “There’s a lot of sick people out there,” he said sadly. “Somebody’s got to help them.”

  “Yeah, Evan, you’re a real humanitarian.”

  Her tone stung, just a little, and his eyes dropped to her mouth. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “Three to five, with time off for good behavior?” she suggested.

  It surprised a laugh out of him.

  Dottie slapped his drinks down on the bar. “Eighteen-fifty.”

  He tossed her a twenty. She glared, but she kept the tip.

  “See you around, officer,” he said as he left.

  “Yes, you will,” Diana said.

  Dottie was glaring at her now. Diana toasted her with the last of her Coke. “Keep your friends close, Dottie, and your enemies closer.”

  Dottie’s glare did not lessen. “Sleeping with the enemy is about as close as you can get.”

  Diana Prince had been in Newenham less than two months, but two months was plenty of time to learn that it was never wise to attempt to match wits with the bartender at Bill’s, whoever she happened to be that day. Meekly, the trooper paid her tab and returned to the post.

  Waiting on the doorstep was Natalie Gosuk. “Ms. Gosuk,” Prince said, and held the door for the woman. She took off her hat and settled in behind the desk. “How may I help you?”

  In the custom of the country, Gosuk kept her eyes and her voice low in response. “I want to see my son.”

  “Yes,” Prince agreed, “so you said when you were in here yesterday. You still have the court order?”

  Natalie displayed it.

  “Is the foster parent denying you access?” Natalie looked confused, and Prince elaborated. “Won’t she let you see him?”

  “She is not there. He is not there.”

  Prince looked up and said sharply, “Do you mean she has taken him somewhere else? Have they moved? Left town?”

  Natalie looked confused again, and Prince remembered the class in Native relations taught at the academy, which had stressed patience and courtesy when dealing with Alaskan citizens who spoke English as a second language. This was a Yupik woman, the product of a culture where a woman seldom raised he
r voice, where a problem was always resolved within the family. The fact that Natalie Gosuk, alone, was looking for help from a state trooper spoke volumes about how seriously she regarded her complaint. “Let’s start over, Ms. Gosuk,” she said. “Please. Have a seat.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Gosuk sat on the extreme edge of one of the two armchairs across the desk. Prince pulled an incident report from the file. “As I understand it, your son was placed with foster parents.”

  “A woman.”

  “Here in town.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is her name?”

  “The woman who flies.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The woman who flies,” Natalie Gosuk repeated.

  Diana Prince looked up from the form. “Do you mean Wyanet Chouinard?”

  A nod.

  “Your son is living with Wyanet Chouinard.”

  Another nod.

  Prince thought back to the morning before, to Natalie Gosuk’s first appearance at the post, of Liam’s subsequent distracted air, and identified the child in question for the first time. “You’re Tim’s mother.”

  A third nod.

  “One moment, please.” Diana looked up Gosuk, Timothy, on the computer, and her initial irritation at Liam not telling her the truth about Natalie Gosuk abated a little. “Ms. Gosuk, Tim was removed from your custody nearly two years ago.”

  “I’m sober now,” Gosuk said, still staring at the floor. “I want to see my son.” She raised her eyes for the first time and held up the court order. “The judge says I can. She says the woman who flies must let me see him.”

  Prince looked at the court order. “Did you go to the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did Ms. Chouinard refuse you entry? Would she not let you in?”

  “The woman who flies is not there.”

  “And your son is not in the house?”

  “They say no.”

  “Who says no?”

  Gosuk gave an infinitesimal shrug. “The people who are there. I don’t know them.”

  Prince looked at the clock. One-thirty. Of course the woman who flies was not there, she was at present providing air transportation for one Corporal Liam Campbell to Nenevok Creek. How very convenient. “Have you tried the airport?”

  “I have no car.”

  “How about a cab?”

  “I have no money.”

  Prince thought again of Liam’s description of Tim when Chouinard flew him out of Ualik, the bleeding wounds, the broken bones, the doctor’s warning that the boy might not regain his hearing in one ear, mercifully proved wrong by time and care. There is a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, Campbell had said. Natalie Gosuk had the might of the law on her side, and the court order in hand to prove it. Moreover, she was Tim’s mother.

  On the other hand, babies should not be, should never be, hit. According to the official report, even one as sloppily filled out as this one by Sergeant Corcoran, the woman sitting in front of her had hit her baby. Repeatedly. Over a period of many years. She was also a drunk. Because she was sober now didn’t mean she would be tomorrow, or even tonight. Whatever genetic, societal, geographical, historical or financial pressures had combined to make this happen did not matter, only the result and the way Prince dealt with the result.

  And then there was the boy. Liam Campbell said he had no wish to see his mother. He had rights, too.

  Diana Prince was a trooper. She had sworn to uphold the constitutions of the United States and the state of Alaska. She held out her hand for the court order. “We’ll serve it this evening,” she said, “when everyone comes home.”

  Newenham, September 3

  “Hi,” Jim Wiley said without enthusiasm.

  “Hi, yourself,” said Jo Dunaway, with even less.

  “Hounded any bereaved fathers lately?”

  “Ha ha,” Jo said, very carefully.

  “I’m supposed to tell you to make yourself at home,” Jim said, waving a hand, “so make yourself at home. There’s beer in the fridge. We’ve got Tim’s room. You get the couch.”

  “So I’ve been told.” She tried hard to keep the edge from her voice, but Luke Prior looked at her with his eyebrows raised. They were very nice eyebrows, to go with his very nice eyes, and it was only a bonus that he was at least ten inches taller and twenty pounds lighter than Jim Wiley. “Luke, this is Jim Wiley. Jim, this is Luke Prior.”

  The two men sized each other up. One looked like a surly teddy bear. The other looked like a Greek god. “Good to meet you, Jim,” Luke said, extending a hand.

  “Yeah, sure,” Jim said, clasping it briefly. There was a noise at the door onto the deck and he looked around. “Oh, and this is Bridget from Ireland. Luke Prior.”

  Bridget smiled and came forward with her hand extended. “It’s Bridget Callahan, Luke.”

  Luke’s very nice eyes had widened upon catching sight of Bridget, and he took her hand and bent his head over it in appreciation of her manifest charms. “I’m delighted to meet you, Bridget.”

  The two of them were surveyed with varying degrees of mixed feeling by the other two people in the room. On one hand, Luke was poaching on Jim’s preserve. On the other hand, he was meanly delighted that Jo’s honey couldn’t keep his hands off other women. Jo, who on the now rapidly fading chance he might be a keeper had brought Luke to Newenham so Wy could vet him for her, felt much the same.

  Jo remembered first that they were guests in this home and avoided open warfare by opening the refrigerator and peering inside. “Where’s Wy? You want something to drink, Luke?”

  “Actually, I’m starving,” Luke said. “Anything in there to eat?”

  “There’s leftover roast from last night,” Bridget said, bustling around the counter and all but elbowing Jo out of the way, who, truth be told, was no help in the kitchen and happy to step aside.

  Jo rescued a couple of Coronas and handed one to Luke. She followed Jim out onto the deck, perched on the edge of the bluff that fell fifty feet to the bank of the river below. The sun was shining but there was a nip in the air that brought color to her cheeks, and a sharp breeze that ruffled her short blond curls. Clouds were forming low on the southeastern horizon, dark with purpose. Storm coming, she thought. Beneath the clouds the Nushagak flowed gray with silt into Bristol Bay, swiftly, as if in a hurry to finish the business of summer before winter set in and froze it into a winter highway for snow machines.

  Jim wasted no time in going on the attack. “What’s Luke do?”

  “He’s a business consultant.”

  Jo could hear Jim as if he’d spoken the words out loud.Now there’s a perfect title for somebody who’s never held down a real job. She said, “Where’s Wy? You didn’t say.”

  “I didn’t get a chance, and flying, where else?”

  “Flying where, and with whom?”

  He sneered at thewhom and made sure she saw it. “To Nenevok Creek, with Liam,” he said, and was irritated when Jo snapped to attention.

  “That the guy they found shot on his gold claim?”

  “Jesus,” Jim muttered, “don’t you ever stop being a reporter?”

  “No,” she shot back, “don’t you ever stop being an asshole?”

  A murmur of voices was heard from the kitchen, a low laugh from Bridget. Jim looked over his shoulder, and Jo turned to see that Luke was helping Bridget make sandwiches. “They’re getting along,” Jim said.

  “Aren’t they, though,” Jo said, staring at him.

  “What?” he said.

  “I didn’t break that story, Jim,” she said in a level voice.

  “Yeah, right,” he said.

  “I didn’t break that story, Jim.”

  “Save it, Jo. You’ve made a career out of breaking stories, the nastier the better. I understand; this was a particularly juicy one, young trooper on the fast track up, loses both wife and son in one tragic accident, goes off the deep end, falls asl
eep on the job and five people wind up dead in Denali. How could you resist?”

  The louder his voice got, the softer she spoke. “I didn’t break that story, Jim.”

  “Bullshit. It came out under your byline.”

  She put the beer down. “You know the three rules Edna Buchanan gives a cub reporter? One, never trust an editor. Two, never trust an editor. Three, never trust an editor.”

  He wanted to say, Who the hell is Edna Buchanan? but he couldn’t bring himself to be that petty. “So you’re saying it’s all your editor’s fault.”

  “No. I’m saying, Never trust an editor. I did, so, in fact, it was my fault.”

  He was acutely aware that she had not apologized, and understood that she had no intention of doing so. “So, what’re you looking for, peace?”

  “That’s pushing it, given our history. How about a truce, for the duration of our visit? Wy’s my best friend, Liam’s yours, we’re sharing their hospitality. They probably won’t invite us back if we leave blood on the floor.”

  “Probably not.”

  Something in the tone of his voice alerted her. “What?”

  He met her eyes, his stern expression sitting oddly on his usually happy-go-lucky face. “Is she going to tell him?”

  Her face went very still. “Tell him what?”

  He snorted. “Yeah, right.” He went to the door, and said curtly over his shoulder, “If she doesn’t, I will.”

  “Jim.”

  His name cracked like a whip, and he turned around, ready to do battle, all thoughts of truce gone.