Cold Skies

by Thomas King

  When that didn’t work, he got a portable sound system, chained himself to one of the fluted columns, and read sections from Norman Tyler’s Historic Preservation: An Introduction to Its History, Principles, and Practice, Robert E. Stipe’s A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century, and Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, until finally, the city had him arrested for trespass and being a public nuisance.

  THUMPS TOOK a deep breath. “Archie, we need to get something straight. I’m not sick.”

  “It’s the first stage of dealing with mortality.”

  “What?”

  “Denial.” Archie stared at Thumps’s jacket. “What the hell is that?”

  “Where?”

  “There,” said Archie. “In your pocket.”

  “What?”

  “Bottled water?” Archie slapped the side of his head. “Are you crazy? Indians are supposed to be environmentalists.”

  THE ARREST DID IT. The video of Archie being hauled away as he shouted quotations from Thoreau and Marx, his fist raised defiantly in the air, made the national news, and in a media minute, Archie and the library went viral.

  The major networks descended on the town like hawks on a rabbit, and the publicity forced the council to reconsider the matter. Over the next year, the air in Chinook was filled with angry words and fur, as a travelling circus of injunctions, lawsuits, and legal clowns tumbled their way through the courts. In the end, the developer folded his tents and slipped away. Three months later, Archie bought the building and set about restoring the old library and turning it into a bookstore.

  “THE FIRST THING you need to do,” said Archie, “is sign the petition.”

  Around a large table in the centre of the Aegean were a series of posters, all of them exactly the same: a photograph of a man in a business suit standing in the middle of a desert with his back to the camera. “Bottled Water,” the caption read, “And You Were Worried About Oil.”

  Archie had enlarged articles from various newspapers on aquifers and watersheds, had mounted them on boards, and arranged them on wood stands. Two smaller tables were stacked with books on the history of water conservation and water management.

  Archie pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Do you know the greatest threat our planet faces?”

  “Something to do with water?”

  “The commodification of fresh water,” said Archie. “And here you are drinking it.”

  “I didn’t drink it.” Thumps pulled the bottle from his pocket. “See, it’s still sealed.”

  Archie grabbed a form off the table. “Here, give me fifteen dollars and fill this out.”

  “Fifteen dollars?”

  “The Chinook Water Watchers,” said Archie. “When you join, you get a stainless steel water bottle.”

  What you couldn’t fault Archie for were his enthusiasms. The man was a civic dynamo. If there was a worthy cause, you could count on Archie’s support. If there was an important event, he’d be there. The only thing he hadn’t done was run for public office.

  Thumps glanced at his watch. He was supposed to be at Beth’s at two. “I don’t do a lot of joining.”

  “You don’t do much of anything, but that’s because you’re sick.” Archie rolled an old, grey metal office chair out from behind his desk. “Sit down so you don’t fall down,” he said. “Now, what do you know about aquifers and watersheds?”

  ARCHIE HAD STARTED his book business on the second floor of his house. Back then the Aegean had been mostly mail-order and it had been reasonably successful. But the old library gave Archie just what he had always wanted.

  A grand storefront.

  Over the course of two years, he painstakingly restored the building. He sandblasted the granite facade, replaced the weeping tile so the basement didn’t leak in the spring, patched the plaster walls, and painted the interior. He talked various people into donating their old couches and chairs and placed them among the stacks so there would be places to sit and read.

  Thumps remembered the day the old Carnegie library reopened as the new and improved Aegean. It was the civic event of the year, and everyone showed up.

  Even the mayor.

  Archie rented a tuxedo and gave all his guests a copy of a best-selling novel by a Canadian writer no one had heard of, a book that Archie had purchased as remainder stock. On that day, the store had been hung with banners and flags, with Greek music playing in the background.

  FOR THE NEXT twenty minutes, Archie took Thumps through a crash course on water conservation, and in spite of his desire to lean back in the chair and go to sleep, he found most of the information interesting.

  “There’s no reason for bottled water. The corporations have suckered us into believing that it’s better than municipal tap water, but it’s not. Between the toxins that the bottles give off and the lack of controls in the bottling process, municipal tap water is better and a hell of a lot fresher. And that’s before we get to the environmental disaster that plastic bottles create. You still awake?”

  “Tap water is better and fresher.”

  “That’s right,” said Archie. “Did you know that a gallon of bottled water costs more than a gallon of gasoline?”

  “It’s right there on the poster.”

  “Knowing something isn’t the same as knowing something,” said Archie. “And you’re going to need a ticket.”

  “Ticket?”

  “For the conference.” Archie rushed to his desk. “The tribe is hosting the event at Buffalo Mountain Resort. Twenty dollars if you buy one now, twenty-five if you wait and buy it at the door.”

  Thumps could feel the fatigue rolling back in like a tide. “What’s with the lights? You forget to pay your electrical bill?”

  Archie rolled his eyes. “National Dark Skies Week.”

  Thumps tried to think of something to say.

  “National Dark Skies Week,” said Archie again. “We’re all supposed to turn out our lights or at least reduce the amount of light we create. Don’t you have a television?”

  “And we’re doing this because?”

  “Light pollution,” said Archie. “You need to read a newspaper every now and then.”

  Thumps tried a smile. “So we need to save the water and reduce the light.”

  “No one likes a smartass.” Archie held up a flyer. “Here.”

  It took a moment for the photograph on the flyer to register. It was James Lester, smiling and full of life.

  “Archie . . .”

  “James Lester,” said Archie, stabbing the brochure with his finger. “He’s giving the keynote.”

  “Archie . . .”

  “You know about the monitoring wells on the Bear Hump?”

  The Bear Hump. Now there was a name Thumps hadn’t heard in a while.

  “Lester’s company, Orion Technologies, has a lease out there. Company’s developed a revolutionary method for measuring and mapping aquifers. Been running tests for the past year. Going to present their findings at the conference.”

  “Don’t imagine the tribe’s too happy about that.”

  “You talking about the old treaty dispute?”

  “I heard the case is back in court.”

  Archie shook his head. “That’s been going on for the last hundred years.”

  “One hundred and seventy-nine years.”

  “And I’m sympathetic,” said Archie. “But Lester’s keynote is going to change the face of water. Where else are you going to get that for forty dollars?”

  Thumps held up a hand. “I thought you said the tickets were twenty dollars.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Archie, his face suddenly aglow with enthusiasm. “But this is a moment in history. You’re going to want to bring a friend.”

  Thumps looked back at the poster. “So, this technology . . .”

  “Resource Analysis Mapping,” said Archie. “RAM for short. There was an article on it in Scientific American.”

  “So,
this technology is . . . valuable?”

  “Valuable?” Archie glanced around the bookstore. Then he leaned in and lowered his voice. “Just between the two of us, there are people who would kill for it.”

  Seven

  Thumps waited until he had turned the corner and was out of sight of the Aegean before he took the bottle of water out of his pocket, cracked the cap, and poured the contents into his new stainless steel container. It was a pretty thing with its silver body, matte black top, and bright blue carabiner, and Thumps made a mental note to use it whenever possible.

  Especially when he was around Archie.

  He should have said something, of course. Archie was going to find out about James Lester soon enough, and when he did, the little Greek wasn’t going to be all that happy with Thumps and his failure to mention that the star of the water conference was dead. Not that it was his business to keep Archie up to date on police investigations.

  THE INSIDE OF Chinook Pharmacy was bright and warm. National Dark Skies Week evidently hadn’t made its way to the drugstore yet. Thumps picked up a small basket and strolled to the back. Chintak Rawat was standing behind the counter, immaculate in his starched white pharmacy jacket.

  “Ah, Mr. DreadfulWater,” said Rawat.

  Rawat had arrived about six years ago, straight from Toronto, and had bought the drugstore from Harry Lomax when Harry retired and moved to the Oregon coast. At first, folks in Chinook had been cool to Rawat, and rather than support a local business, they drove to the big-box stores in Great Falls and Helena to get their drugs.

  But then the price of gas had gone up and economics proved to be more powerful than prejudice.

  “Mr. Archie tells me that you are not feeling well.”

  Thumps wasn’t going to strangle Archie. He was going to borrow Duke’s service revolver and shoot the little Greek.

  “He is quite concerned about your health,” said Rawat. “He tells me that you have never had a physical. May I inquire as to who your family doctor might be?”

  “I don’t really have a family doctor.”

  “Most disturbing. Everyone should have a family doctor. How else will you get the health care you need if you do not have a family doctor?”

  “I wanted to ask you about vitamins.”

  “Ah,” said Rawat. “Vitamins. The North American answer to good health.”

  “Something for low energy.”

  “I sell a great many vitamins,” said Rawat. “I tell all my customers that most vitamins are not worth the buying, that the human body can get the necessary nutrients and minerals from a balanced diet.”

  “I hear that B12 is good for that.”

  “Yes,” said Rawat. “Adults normally require around 2.3 micrograms a day. Beef liver and clams are excellent sources of B12, as are fish, meat, eggs, and milk, but it would be presumptuous of me to suggest a wellness protocol for you. That is the purview of your family doctor. The family doctor examines, considers, and, if necessary, prescribes, and I, as your pharmacist, then fill that prescription. As you can see, this is a very good system, though from time to time, there can be problems.”

  “Problems?”

  “Oh yes,” said Rawat. “There are unfortunate examples of unscrupulous doctors who will prescribe certain drugs to certain individuals who then sell them on the street. And there are drug companies who from time to time bring a drug to market before it has been fully tested because the potential profits are too great to resist.”

  “So, you don’t have any recommendations?”

  “But these instances are rare, and I will say no more about it.”

  THUMPS WANDERED the pharmacy looking at shampoos and the new shaving gels in neon colours. He considered sneaking a bottle of B12 when Rawat wasn’t looking and moving quickly to the checkout line. Just in case a vitamin fix was all that was needed and he could forgo any further medical intervention.

  Beth.

  Thumps checked his watch. Beth had said two, and when Beth Mooney said two, she meant two. Not quarter past.

  THE OLD LAND TITLES building was a two-storey, red brick affair with arched windows, checkerboard banding, and granite sills. Constructed in 1893, it had been home to land transactions, mining claims, and grazing leases as well as lawsuits, fist fights, and more serious disagreements. In 1902, a water-rights dispute led to a gunfight between groups of ranchers and farmers, who blazed away at each other for several minutes until both sides ran out of ammunition.

  One of the ranchers shot another rancher by mistake, and a farmer broke an arm when he slipped and fell off the stone steps. Several windows in the building were shot out, and you could still see where the gunfire had chipped out pieces of the brick banding.

  By 1910, the city fathers decided that the building was too small to manage the demand, and a new Land Titles building was built next to city hall so that business and politics could be conducted in the same bed. The old Land Titles building was sold to a Mrs. Archibald Gibbons, a businesswoman from New Jersey who refurbished it as a boarding house, where young women of adventurous natures might spend their evenings entertaining adventurous gentlemen of all ages. In 1917, a more conservatively minded council changed the city by-laws and made such adventures illegal, and Mrs. Gibbons sold the building and moved back to New Jersey.

  By the time Beth and Cora Mae bought the building, it had been a billiard parlour, a restaurant, a lawyer’s office, and a short-lived men’s club. The building had not weathered the years or the changes in usage all that well. The brick exterior had gone black, the window frames had rotted out, and the lath-and-plaster walls had begun to crack and crumble. Thumps had no idea how much work and money the two women had put into the place, but they had slowly restored the building until it was as crisp and spiffy as the day it was built.

  Thumps hoped that the front door would be open. It wasn’t. Which meant only one thing. Reluctantly, he pressed the intercom button.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Thumps.”

  “Basement,” said Beth.

  The second floor of the old Land Titles building had been converted to living quarters. The first floor was Beth’s medical practice. The basement housed the morgue. Thumps had nothing against basements. He had a darkroom in his basement. Beth had dead bodies in hers.

  Along with an array of disturbing smells.

  The basement was cold, dank, and gloomy. Thumps was relieved to find Beth sitting behind her desk rather than standing next to the stainless steel table, sorting through a corpse.

  “When’d you get glasses?”

  “Shit.” Beth snatched the glasses off her head and shoved them in the drawer.

  “They look great.”

  “I look like a librarian.”

  “Nothing wrong with librarians.”

  “What the hell do you want anyway?”

  “This was your idea.”

  Beth frowned. “Right,” she said. “The physical.”

  The white metal cabinet under the window was the only piece of furniture in the basement that looked as though it might have once been alive. Beth opened a drawer and took out a small plastic bottle.

  “I need a urine sample.”

  “You want me to pee in the bottle?”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “Here?”

  “In the bathroom,” said Beth. “Mid-stream.”

  It was a bit unnerving walking into the tiny bathroom with an empty bottle, knowing that Beth could hear him through the thin walls, and it was more than a little embarrassing walking out with a full bottle in hand.

  “Just put it over there,” said Beth.

  “Is that it?”

  On the table, Beth had laid out several test tubes, a piece of rubber tubing, and a sealed package, the contents of which Thumps was sure he wasn’t going to like.

  “Let’s start with the blood work.”

  Thumps took a deep breath. “Couldn’t we start with the questions?”

  �
��Questions?”

  “You know,” said Thumps. “Do you drink? Do you smoke? What’s your favourite colour?”

  Beth was smiling. Thumps wasn’t sure she was happy, but she was smiling. “Take off your shirt and sit on the slab.”

  Beth smiling or not, Thumps wasn’t going anywhere near the autopsy table. “Aren’t doctors supposed to be sympathetic?” Thumps could feel sweat forming on different parts of his body, and he could hear a distinct ringing in his ears.

  Beth leaned over the desk and pressed the intercom button. “Yes?”

  “Hockney,” said the voice.

  “Basement,” said Beth.

  Okay, so the ringing hadn’t been in his ears, but the sweat was real enough. Thumps had been happy to be rid of the sheriff earlier, but as he heard Duke stomp his way down the metal stairs, he felt positively euphoric. As though he had been found by search and rescue.

  “Thumps?” said the sheriff.

  “He’s here for a physical,” said Beth.

  “Can I watch?”

  Okay, maybe not search and rescue. Maybe just another psychopath.

  “Put him on the autopsy table,” said Beth, “and hold him down.”

  “My pleasure,” said Duke.

  “Costa Rica,” said Thumps, as quickly as his dry mouth would let him.

  “Which arm will it be?” Beth held up the needle so the metal gleamed in the light. “Left or right?”

  Thumps was sure that, sometime in the near future, science would find a way to do blood chemistry without the barbarities of plunging a nasty steel tube into your arm and sucking out vast quantities of blood.

  Hockney waited patiently while Beth listened to Thumps’s heart, checked his reflexes, looked down his throat, probed his body with her fingers and asked him unnecessary questions about his bodily functions.

  “You know,” said Hockney, “this is fun.”

  “When was the last time you had a physical, sheriff?”

  “Macy asks me the same question.”

  “And?”

  “She gets the same answer.”

  Beth taped a piece of cotton over the wound. Thumps had been shot once, and as he sat in the chair, he tried to decide whether catching a bullet was as terrifying as getting a physical in a morgue.