The Mountains Bow Down

by Sibella Giorello

  I jogged down Creek Street’s creosote timbers, darting around tourists who carried bulging plastic bags filled with souvenir hats and shirts. When I reached Mission Street, I slowed to a walk, then stopped at Whale Park and called McLeod. I told him about the body being shipped to the ME in Anchorage.

  “So her death is suspicious,” he said.

  “Not officially.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means the mortician is a coward. He won’t come right out and say it’s suspicious. And I don’t expect anyone from the cruise line to disagree. Murder doesn’t exactly make you want to get on board the ship.”

  “Neither do suicides,” McLeod pointed out.

  “Except suicide isn’t seen as the ship’s fault.”

  “Good point. What about next of kin?”

  “No children.” This was something I’d asked Geert. And it wasn’t a stupid question.

  “Did you get to talk to him?”

  “Carpenter? I asked if she’d been depressed.” I described the rest of this morning’s scene—Carpenter staggering to the body, showing shock and sadness, comforted by Sandy Sparks, the producer, then being whisked away so photographs wouldn’t show up in the tabloids. “His reaction wasn’t what I’d expect from a man whose wife was just found dead.”

  “So right now, the only person who thinks she was murdered is you?”

  I stared at the mountains. Steep forests layered their sides. Ocean water curled like liquid mercury around their feet. McLeod sighed. A man of prodigious sighs, his lungs moved air like ancient leather bellows.

  “Sir, I’d like nothing more than to tell you this woman ended her own life. But facts say otherwise. A killer is on that ship and if we don’t find him, he walks away a free man.” I stopped, afraid my voice sounded strident.

  “Don’t ever change, Raleigh.” The air bellowed again. “It’s good you’re like this. Good for us. Not so good for you.”

  “It’s fine, sir.”

  “That’s what you always say. But I want to send you some help on this.”

  I felt the weight lift from my shoulders, the tension in my neck easing. “Thank you, sir. I’d appreciate some help.”

  “Great. Jack can be there by this afternoon.”

  “What—pardon? Jack?”

  “I sent out a squad e-mail after the Alaska office passed. Said it was a free cruise to Alaska, which it sort of is. Jack was the first to reply. His plane’s ready to go.”

  I felt sick. “Plane?”

  “He’s a Bureau pilot. Didn’t you know? Keeps his own plane.”

  What I knew about Jack Stephanson was this: he was a complete jerk. During my disciplinary transfer to Seattle, Jack was assigned to help ease my transition into the new field office. Help the new kid. Instead he hazed, harassed, and mocked me, before finally admitting his initial goal was to flush me from the FBI. And if that wasn’t enough, before I went back to Virginia, he’d had the gall to ask for a date.

  “He needs to know when your ship leaves Ketchikan.”

  We leave in five minutes, I wanted to lie. Don’t bother sending him.

  Lifting my face to the sun, feeling the sting of self-pity in my eyes, the happy tourists flowed like a river around me. Across the street, on the totem pole, a raven perched and cawed with harsh laughter. I agreed it was quite the joke: my “help” was Jack Stephanson.

  “Thank you for offering, sir, but on second thought, it’s better if I handle this myself.”

  “Nonsense, Raleigh. You’re looking a gilt horse in the mouth.”

  I had rules about lying. Really. In their way, they were strict rules. It was permissible to lie in order to protect my mother’s mental health. Or if the Bureau sent me undercover. Otherwise lying still ranked with the other nine commandments.

  But right now, the truth tasted as bad as Eau de Funeral Home.

  “Six o’clock.” I swallowed. “The ship leaves Ketchikan at six tonight.”

  “Plenty of time! Make sure their security knows Jack’s coming on board. If they give you any grief, call me. A retired agent runs their corporate security.”

  I wanted to say something, but words refused to leave my mouth.

  McLeod continued, “Jack says meet him at the marina. You know where that is?”

  I stared at the marina. The wooden masts and towering fishing vessels rocked softly along the base of Deer Mountain.

  “I can find it,” I told him.

  “You can always count on my help, Raleigh,” he said. “I’ll never leave you up a creek without a saddle.”

  Chapter Five

  At the cruise ship gangway, the big bald Dutchman waited with one hand stretched out.

  Making sure nobody could see, I reached into my backpack and surrendered my Glock 22, pushing away the vulnerability that always swept over me whenever I wasn’t armed.

  “The undertaker called,” Geert said, walking up the plank with my weapon concealed in a nylon pouch.

  I figured the mortician probably started tattling before I was halfway down Creek Street. Shrugging off my backpack, I followed Geert to the security arches. He stepped around them while I scanned my room’s keycard in a computer by the entrance, then sent my pack through the X-ray machine. I waited for the inevitable query about my rock hammer, which Geert vouched for—one of his abrupt nods that nobody questioned. He and I proceeded across the atrium where a chamber quartet played Vivaldi for people who stayed on board, their reasons completely beyond my comprehension.

  “The mortician says—”

  “In my office.” He suddenly broke into one of those large smiles never intended for me and stopped to chat with an elderly couple. To the strains of “Spring,” they asked him about the ship’s turnaround this morning. Geert glossed over the details and I stared at the floor. It was stone, red stone. Rouge Royal, I decided. The distinctive limestone from Belgium, threaded with white veins. Almost as hard as Geert.

  “Hope to see you tonight.” He waved to the couple and started walking again, assuming I’d follow. An obedient puppy.

  We took a sharp right from the atrium and cut through the casino. The place was empty. But the acrid odor of cigarettes seeped from the green felt poker tables and the carpeting patterned with tumbling dice. We came out the casino’s other side to a dark hallway with padded blue walls.

  Geert took a small remote from his front pocket, pressed a button, and a section of the padded wall swiveled open.

  I counted four rooms inside the hidden chamber, each empty. Geert’s office was at the far end. A porthole above his desk framed a bright circle of reflected light, shifting with the play of water. He stepped to the interior wall, opened a wooden cabinet, and spun the dial on his safe, shifting his large body to block my view. I gazed out the porthole, preparing myself for another conversation that would sound like clomping wooden clogs. When the safe popped open, he deposited my gun inside, slammed the door shut, and gave the dial another spin.

  In his thick accent he said, “The mortician did not say suicide.”

  “The mortician wants a second opinion,” I clarified. “Obviously something was suspicious or he’d just say she killed herself.”

  “What’s so suspicious?”

  “The bracelet, for instance.”

  I was certain this was a test. His long background in law enforcement surely gave him radar. And this morning’s scene must have triggered one or two signals. When he turned toward the porthole, his Dutch-blue eyes seemed translucent.

  He twirled the handlebar mustache. “Now we got real problems.”

  “Because it’s murder?”

  “Because you want to stir up our guests. You can’t run around talking about murder. People pay money for this trip. Lots of money. Right now, the woman is a suicide. Caw-lee-for-knee-ya suicide. Everyone believes it but you.”

  “And you.”

  His eyes gaped. “I said no thing like that.”

  “You don’t have to.” I wanted to point o
ut the neck bruises but didn’t know this man’s full motives. Maybe he wanted to cover this up. Maybe somebody paid him to cover it up. “With your esteemed background in law enforcement, you can’t be comfortable with how well preserved she looked.”

  He gave a Netherlandish shrug. “We get all kinds on ships.”

  “Including murderers.”

  “Who sees a murderer? I see happy people, all over.”

  “Happy on the outside. But inside, somebody’s a monster.”

  “You say.”

  “Yes, and I’d like to see the complete passenger list. Along with the crew list.”

  “Crew?” The blue eyes widened.

  “I’m going to run background checks.”

  “What, you think I hire them from calling their mommy? I check backgrounds. Nobody works this ship unless they are clean like whistles.”

  “Then the passenger list. Please.”

  “You don’t talk to nobody before you talk to me.”

  I hesitated, then lifted my head arrogantly. “I’m bringing aboard another FBI agent.”

  I said this with as much haughtiness and bravado as possible. My hope was the tone would tick him off, along with somebody of no authority giving him an order. Then he would deny Jack coming on board.

  But luck doesn’t exist.

  Picking up his desk phone, Geert stabbed ten numbers and spoke to somebody by the first name of Candice. He slathered on the charm and I learned that Candice’s son in the military was doing fine; the weather in Florida was great; and Geert was taking her for a drink next time he was in Orlando. I gazed out the porthole until he asked Candice if there were any empty cabins.

  He glanced up, speaking to me like an interrogator. “What is the name of this person?”

  Satan.

  “Jack Stephanson,” I said.

  He thanked Candice, then hung up.

  “Nice cabin. Ocean view with a patio. Living room, the whole thing.”

  Sure. Jack gets the suite. Meanwhile I was practically in steerage.

  “You know what would be nice,” I said, feeling a sinister hope. “If you could find some poor deserving people and give them the deluxe cabin. The agent could take their cabin.”

  “Yah, what I’m doing. The agent will be next door to you.”

  I suppressed a sob.

  “What is wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Do you still have that bracelet?”

  “Stupid question. It is in the safe.”

  “May I borrow it?”

  The white eyebrows avalanched into a frown.

  “I noticed that you didn’t show it to the husband.”

  “I am waiting,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For when he is not drunk.”

  “That might take awhile,” I said. “May I show it to him, to see his reaction? I can bring it right back.”

  He thought about it before swiveling toward the safe and once again opening it. He handed me a clear plastic bag. An evidence bag. Which told me he did have suspicions.

  Even in the mundane bag, the blue gems glittered, luscious with wealth. Sapphires or tanzanite? I wondered again.

  “You know where he is?” Geert asked.

  “Carpenter? No.”

  “He is in the Sky Bar,” Geert said. “And he is drunk.”

  The Sky Bar perched over the ship’s aft with a space-age design full of sleek picture windows and skylights. Even parts of the floor were Plexiglas, and as I walked over to the movie star hunched over his drink at the bar, the view of the ocean below inflicted mild vertigo. Since we left Seattle, Milo Carpenter had worn sunglasses, even indoors. Here, it made sense. So much white light flooded the place everything looked like an overexposed photograph.

  I took a stool beside him. The famous firm jaw was whiskered gray and brown, his skin slack. Shock did that. Lack of sleep. Too much alcohol.

  Or the strain from covering up your wife’s murder.

  The bartender kept silent watch over his lone patron, washing and wiping glasses. The brass name tag on his uniform said “Corey, The Philippines.”

  “You’re open, right?” I said.

  “Yes, we are closed,” Corey said.

  I looked at Milo. No reaction. “I’m with him,” I said.

  The actor looked up. His dark Wayfarers were like black panels over his eyes. His forehead suddenly wrinkled with curiosity. During my two days consulting on the movie, I’d noticed curiosity never lasted long.

  He went back to his drink.

  “What you like?” Corey asked me.

  “Coca-Cola, please. With ice cubes, no crushed ice.”

  “Yes, crushed ice.”

  “Yes. Cubes.”

  Milo bent his elbows on the bar, guarding three fingers of bourbon. The bartender walked away and I no longer cared what was in my Coke.

  “You doing all right,” I asked Milo, “considering what happened?”

  He smiled. A perfect smile. Teeth like a Steinway.

  “Here, you can have this.” He grabbed a pen beside his tab, then picked up the white coaster Corey set down for my Coke. Scrawling his name on the cardboard, he offered it to me. “Auction my autograph on eBay, you’ll make good money.”

  The M looked like a ragged mountain range. The C was an O with the middle bitten out.

  “I wanted to talk to you about this morning.” I placed the coaster back on the bar. “Can we go somewhere private?”

  “Talk, like, an FBI agent?” The perfect smile disappeared.

  “Right.” I nodded. “Not for the movie.”

  The bartender turned discreetly and puttered toward a back sink. Milo stared at the man’s back, then unsaddled himself from the bar stool, slowly making his way across the room. The tables and chairs were more clear plastic. Looking through them, the objects on the other side looked bent and melted. Like being trapped inside a Salvador Dalí painting.

  “I’m sorry about your wife.” I took a seat at the Plexiglas table that made our feet below look like clown shoes. “She seemed like a nice woman.”

  “My wife was the greatest.” His voice sounded tired, croaky. “There was nobody greater.”

  Judy Carpenter had stayed behind the cameras on the movie set. Milo was the center of attention. Good and bad attention. From what I’d seen, he stayed so inebriated that even the simplest scenes required ten or fifteen takes. The movie didn’t need an FBI consultant; it needed a Betty Ford counselor.

  “How long were you married?”

  “Twenty-two years.” He shook his head. “The greatest woman, ever.”

  “Twenty-two years is quite an accomplishment.”

  “In Hollywood that’s an eternity.”

  “Was it a happy marriage?”

  He stared at his drink. The sunglasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose. A good nose. Not too small. Not too big. Maybe even real. He pushed the sunglasses back up before looking at me.

  “I’ll start from the beginning, so you get the clear picture,” he said, with a trace of hostility. “I was a skinny unemployed actor and she—” He laughed. It turned into a sob. I waited. “She was sewing costumes for ice-skaters. Ice-skaters! Whatever money she made, she spent on sending me to auditions. She never gave up, never stopped believing. She—” He caught another sob, drinking through it. The ice clicked on his perfect teeth.

  “So she’s been with you the whole way.”

  “You have no idea. What we went through . . . My first jobs went straight to video. No character development. They never gave me time to figure out who I was playing.”

  During my time giving him advice on FBI procedures—most of which he ignored—I noticed that every conversation came back to him. It wasn’t really a surprise. Acting was a narcissistic profession. From what I’d seen, Milo Carpenter was born for it.

  “Then I got this one character,” he continued. “I really dug him. I knew I could nail his personality. I knew it. But those low-budget jerks, they just wouldn
’t give me the chance. I came home from the set one night feeling really low. I was ready to quit, go back to moving furniture. You know what Judy did?”

  I shook my head.

  “She made me a giant fat suit.” His gleaming smile reappeared.

  “That was thoughtful,” I said, for something to say.

  “No, see, my character was a burglar but he was too fat to get through any windows or doors. Comedy, get it?”

  “Yes. Of course. Comedy.”

  “But that production was too cheap to let me take the fat suit home. I wanted to really get into the character. But they were afraid I’d rip it or something. So Judy made me one. Every night I could walk around our dumpy apartment in West Hollywood and stay in character. And she didn’t spend one dime on it—that’s how good she was. She took this foam thing off our bed and cut it up. Then she used the scraps from those ice-skater costumes. When the reviews came out, every single one said I was the best thing in a bad movie. That was my break.” He looked into the drink again, then downed the rest of it. “That’s all you need to know about my wife. The woman was a real saint.”

  “Did the saint happen to leave a suicide note?”

  He froze.

  I wasn’t his buddy. I wasn’t interested in his charm. And somebody killed his wife.

  After a moment, he shook his head, indicating she left no note, and I pulled the plastic bag from my pocket. With the room’s intense illumination, the blue gems glowed like tiny gas flames. Hypnotic pilot-light jewels. “Did this bracelet belong to your wife?”

  He pulled the sunglasses off his face. The famous green eyes were bloodshot, bagged with dark circles. “Where did you find that?”

  “Did it belong to your wife?”

  “You found that on her?”

  I left the bag on the table. Light poured into the facets. But the colors kept shifting from light blue to navy to that fierce violet hue. I’d seen sapphires do something like that, but only really nice ones. Amethyst could also color-shift, despite its classification as only a semiprecious stone. But maybe the idea of amethyst came from the sharp scent on the actor’s breath. The ancient Greeks named the purple stone amethustos, meaning “not intoxicated.” Believing violet quartz protected against drunkenness, the Greeks even made their drinking vessels out of amethyst.