Icy Clutches

by Aaron Elkins

  "He knows what time it is. He is choosing to avoid us,” said Anna Henckel, who believed in stating the obvious.

  "I wonder why,” Elliott Fisk said dryly, slicing a one-by-two-inch rectangle from his cinnamon roll and facing carefully away from Shirley, lest she think he was speaking to her.

  "Well, he's going to have to come out and face us sooner or later,” Walter Judd said with a happy grin. He buttered another couple of biscuits to go with his three-egg, fresh-salmon omelet. “And when he does, he's going to have a few questions to answer."

  "He sure is,” Pratt agreed equably, working steadily on a plate of steak and eggs.

  "If I knew his room number I'd go get him myself,” Fisk grumbled.

  Anna glanced at him, eyebrows lifted fractionally. “Room 50."

  "Oh?” Fisk paused in his dissection of the bun. “Yes, well, I'll give him fifteen more minutes. Until 8:45."

  * * * *

  Doris Boileau placed the small paper-wrapped bar of Camay on the bathroom counter, put a larger one on the recessed shelf of the shower stall, and took a final practiced look around. Satisfied, she closed the door to the room behind her and checked her watch. Only a little after eight-thirty and here she was already done with Room 48, way ahead of schedule. It certainly was a help when people got up and about their business early.

  She took off one of her plastic gloves, glanced cautiously about, and had a restorative bite from the glazed cinnamon bun she'd been hauling around on her cart. She stuffed it all the way in with a pinky, then washed it down with a couple of swallows of heavily sweetened tea from a pint-sized insulated cup, while having another prudent look around. Mr. Granle didn't care for them snacking on the job, and she was in no mood to stir him up, especially after the snit he'd gotten into yesterday when she couldn't find her passkey at the end of her shift.

  And all over nothing. Hadn't the key turned up this morning in the bottom of the linen cart? Really, it could have happened to anyone.

  She put her glove back on and pushed the cart along the wooden walkway to Room 50, chewing reflectively. The extra four hundred dollars she was earning this week was going to come in handy. For the dozenth time she cast luxuriously about in her mind for spending alternatives. Maybe a trip to visit Flo in Victoria next February when she couldn't stand the gray days anymore. Maybe even a shopping trip to Seattle, if she could find somebody to share expenses with. But not with Nadine again. No, that was more than a soul could be expected to bear.

  She knocked briskly at the door to Room 50. “Service!” she shouted, but she was already inserting the key in the lock. M. Audley Tremaine would be long gone, having breakfast with his group. Just once, she thought wishfully, it'd be nice if he wasn't gone, just so she could say she'd gotten to meet him, maybe even get his autograph. Of course she'd tell Nadine she'd met him anyway, but that wasn't the same thing. And it wasn't the same thing just peeking at him from a distance, the way she'd managed to do a few times; not that it wasn't exciting. She turned the key.

  As she was to tell it for the rest of her life, it was her sixth sense, which she'd inherited directly from her Grandmother Strankman—a mysterious tingling across her cheeks, just below her eyes—that told her something was wrong even before she got the door all the way open. This, Doris ardently believed. Actually it was a combination of things, none of them consciously noticed at first, and none of them mysterious, but all of them different from the way things had been on previous mornings.

  First, the drapes were still closed, the room dim. Second, the bed had been made up. Now why would he do that? And third, there was the smell. God knows, she had encountered plenty of peculiar smells after two decades of opening hotel-room doors first thing in the morning, but this was different; not a smell so much as a thickness in the air, cloying and gamy.

  She stood in the doorway for a few seconds. “Professor Tremaine?” she called uncertainly.

  No answer. Now she noticed the pint bottle of brandy on the near nightstand, and the empty glass next to it, caught in the shaft of light from the open door. Next to it was another glass with—my Lord, with a set of dentures soaking in pale blue liquid. M. Audley Tremaine with false teeth? She stared at it, shocked and embarrassed. The morning light illuminated rows of bright bubbles, clinging like beads of quicksilver to the crevices between the teeth.

  "Professor Tremaine?” she called again.

  She entered tentatively. From the partially open bathroom door light flooded onto the burlap-covered partition between bathroom and bedroom. She walked slowly toward the door, breathing shallowly through her mouth, her heart sinking with each step. Her ears hummed.

  "Professor?"

  Trembling and ready to bolt, she pushed the bathroom door all the way open. Her teeth were bared, her breath stopped in her throat. There were used towels tossed all over the shower door, paper wrappers from the drinking glasses crumpled and dropped onto the counter, a blow dryer with its cord neatly coiled. The hum was coming from the ceiling fan.

  No M. Audley Tremaine.

  She exhaled sharply, dizzy with relief, and switched off the fan. Just what had she expected to find, for God's sake? M. Audley Tremaine, crumpled in a heap on the floor in front of the toilet, the way Sheila had once found that poor old man when she was working at the Prospector in Ketchikan? Heart attack while at his stool was the official verdict. What a thing.

  "Well, now, let's just get a little light in here,” she said aloud, pert and businesslike. She rubbed her plastic-gloved hands together to prove she was herself again. “And air."

  She rounded the burlap-covered partition, heading for the windows. Doris Boileau was a hefty woman, and when she moved forcefully she built up considerable momentum. By the time she realized that the shadowed, hanging mass she was about to brush against was not a bundle of clothes draped over the partition, it was too late to stop. Her right shoulder plowed into it, sending it swinging slowly away from her. Her eyes clamped themselves shut, but not before she had seen those dangling, naked feet, white and horrible. She stood paralyzed and empty-minded, her flesh crawling. Noiselessly the body swung back with nightmare slowness to bump against her, weirdly heavy, its silk bathrobe smooth and cool. She began to edge backwards, her eyes still pressed shut, the skin of her scalp cold and jumping. Don't look. Don't think. Just—

  A man's voice sounded behind her. “What's—"

  Doris screamed. Her eyes popped open. The eyeballs rolled up out of sight. She lifted her heavy arms with unlikely grace and fainted.

  Luckily for Elliott Fisk, he was able to leap nimbly out of the way at the last moment.

  * * * *

  "Listen to this,” Gideon said as the car pulled into the lodge parking area. —National Monument officials have now confirmed reports that the fragmentary human remains recently discovered at the terminus of Tirku Glacier are those of members of a botanical research party killed in a 1960 avalanche.’ And then—'A skeletal-identification expert has subsequently identified the bones as those of Fisk and James Pratt.’”

  "When was this?” Owen said, turning the car onto the lodge driveway.

  Gideon looked at the photocopy again. “September 8, 1964. You didn't know about it?"

  "Nope, way before my time."

  "Well, I need to find out more about this, Owen. I'd love to see what this guy came up with, match my findings to his. And I'd like to see the bones themselves, if they're still available. Maybe they'd help us figure out which of the new fragments are Fisk's and which are Pratt's."

  "What would that do for us?” Owen pulled the car to a stop in the small parking space to the left of the main building and turned to face Gideon, one elbow over the back of the seat.

  "For starters, it would tell us who got murdered."

  John stirred and stretched. “Doc,” he said sleepily, “those remains would have gone to the next of kin a long time ago. You have any idea what it takes to get an exhumation order? Assuming they weren't cremated."

 
Gideon sagged. “That's right. Damn. John, don't you have any more information on this? The name of the expert?"

  John shook his head. “Just what's in the article. Hey, Owen, which way's the dining room?"

  They climbed out of the car and headed toward the main building. The sky was the same sullen gray it had been over Gustavus, but the air of Bartlett Cove was softer, milder; rich with the clean, damp-earth smell of ferns.

  "What about you, Owen?” Gideon said. “There must be a record of this somewhere in your files. Photographs of the bones, maybe, or measurements."

  "Which files would those be?"

  "I don't know; the official park files, I guess."

  The ranger put his head back and laughed. “I wouldn't count on it. In 1964 this place wasn't even a national park, just a monument and preserve. Hell, Alaska was barely a state. I don't think they were too big on files at the time. But let me ask Arthur. If anybody knows about files, Arthur's the man."

  They mounted the wooden steps to the deck surrounding the building. “Owen, something's bothering me,” Gideon said. “Here's an expedition lost on a glacier in 1960. Four years later, in 1964, a bunch of bones fall out of the terminus. And then some more from the same group pop out twenty-five years after that. How can that be? Why wouldn't they all be carried to the snout at the same speed, the speed the glacier's advancing? Flowing, I mean."

  Owen stopped with his hand on the front-door handle. “You don't know too much about glaciers, do you?"

  Gideon sighed.

  "Doc knows about everything,” John said.

  "Not glaciers,” Gideon said.

  "Well, nobody knows that much about glaciers, when you come down to it,” Owen said kindly, “but the rate of flow inside isn't necessarily the same as it is on top, or even the same from one part of a glacier to another. And when you're talking about what's happening in crevasses, nobody knows anything. All I can tell you is that a twenty-five-year spread isn't that amazing. There's an ice field on Mount Blanc—"

  "Owen! Thank God you're back!"

  They turned to see the lodge manager running nimbly over the deck toward them. Mr. Granle was a willowy and fragile man of thirty, whom Gideon had thus far not known to speak above a whisper or move with anything but discreet restraint.

  "Owen, he's dead!” Mr. Granle shrieked. “He killed himself! Come quick!” He turned and started back the way he'd come.

  "Who's dead?” Owen shouted after him. “Who—” He looked briefly at John and Gideon. His amiable face dropped. “Oh, shit."

  The three of them took off after Mr. Granle at a run.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 10

  * * * *

  The guest units of Glacier Bay Lodge were small, attached, shake-roofed cottages that fanned out from the main building and were connected to it by a network of wooden walkways that rambled through the greenery and provided secure footing above ground that was sodden in summer and icy in winter. Mr. Granle scrambled over these with unexpected speed, like a spider skittering through its web; left from the main building, down a short flight of steps, right along the next section of walkway, up a few steps, then left again. Some distance behind him the three larger men sprinted, the walkway vibrating under their pounding feet.

  "Dammit!” John shouted as the manager vanished behind a corner, “hold up!"

  Mr. Granle bobbed back into view. “It's here!” he piped.

  "In there,” he said, as they reached him. Trembling, pale, he pointed to an open doorway ten feet farther on. A housecleaning cart stood innocently in front of it. Mr. Granle licked bloodless lips. “Do you mind if I don't—"

  They rushed past him and into Room 50: John first, then Owen, then—hesitantly—Gideon, wondering uneasily if he shouldn't have waited back at the main building. What business did he have in here?

  The room was a duplicate of his own. Double bed to the left, desk to the right, a table and a few chairs near the windows at the back. A large woman in a maid's smock lay groaning, her eyes closed, propped against the wall under the windows. At the right rear was the bathroom, outside of which was a sink and small open closet for hanging clothes. This area was separated from the main part of the room by a sturdy, burlap-covered partition with two clothes hooks in it at shoulder height. Tremaine's body was on the room side of the partition, suspended from a cord stretched up and over the top and attached to one of the hooks on the other side. At the hook itself stood Elliott Fisk, staring at them, motionless, his hands raised to the cord.

  "What are you doing?” John said sharply.

  Fisk blinked rapidly. “Doing? What am I doing?"

  "Please take your hands off that, sir."

  "What? Of course.” His hands leapt from the hook as if they'd been slapped. “I was just trying to...it didn't seem right to just leave him...” He backed away, reaching behind him to brace himself on the sink counter.

  "Don't touch anything,” John snapped.

  Fisk jerked his hand back; clutched it in his other hand the way a child does to keep himself from touching something he isn't supposed to. “Touch? No, of course not."

  "Who are you?” John asked.

  "Elliott Fisk.” He pointed distractedly at Gideon. “He knows me."

  John didn't bother to confirm it “What are you doing in here?"

  Owen caught Gideon's eye briefly. What's going on? the look asked. John's treating this like a murder, not a suicide. Gideon gave him back an eyebrow shrug. He was wondering the same thing.

  "Doing? I came to get Dr. Tremaine. He was late. You can ask the others. They—"

  The maid gave a louder moan, one with her heart in it, and rocked her head back and forth. Her eyes were still closed.

  The sound seemed to steady Fisk. Under his beard his little mouth firmed. “Look here, why shouldn't I touch anything? It's simple human decency to get him down off that hook. Just who are you, anyway?"

  "Mr. Lau is with the FBI,” Owen said, looking a lot more official in his snappy uniform than John did in his washed-out blue denims.

  The maid groaned again. A stocky, stretched-out leg quivered. The heel of her blue jogging sneaker thrummed on the carpet.

  "Do you mind if I help this poor woman?” Fisk demanded. He didn't wait for an answer but boldly bent to her and began chafing the back of her hand. “There, there.” Startled, she stared confusedly at him.

  "It's all right,” he told her earnestly, “I'm a dentist.” Such was the state of her mind that she appeared to be reassured. Fisk chafed some more. “Well now,” he said with empty professional cheer, “do we think we can get up?"

  "I'll give it a try,” she said weakly.

  With Gideon's and Fisk's help she got to her feet, then tottered from the room, leaning heavily on Fisk's unsubstantial but freely offered arm and keeping her face averted from the corpse. Once outside, judging from the sounds that came in from the walkway, she was received into the solicitous embrace of Mr. Granle and led tenderly away with much cooing and sympathy. John walked to the door and closed it without touching the knob. The three men studied the body silently.

  Tremaine was wearing only a burgundy-silk bathrobe, tied at the waist. Open-backed leather slippers lay near his feet, one right-side up, the other overturned. A small, hard-bodied dressing case, also on its side, lay a few inches away. Tremaine's toes rested on the carpet, his heels just above it.

  Owen waved vaguely at the dead man's feet and murmured something that caught in his throat. He tried again. “Rope must have stretched,” he said thickly.

  "Yup,” John said. He was thinking, his hands on his hips, his feet spread.

  "This is the first—” Owen began. “I mean, you'll probably think it's funny, but I've never—I mean, I've seen dead people before, but never a—” He realized he was running on and stopped. He rubbed the back of a forefinger across his upper lip.

  Gideon looked at him sympathetically. He knew how the ranger felt. Asphyxiated people are terrible to look
at, and Tremaine was no exception: thickened tongue pushed out obscenely, dried blood around the nostrils, protruding eyes, lips and ears a weird blue-gray, fingers clenched like talons.

  At least Owen didn't look as if he were about to throw up, which was more than Gideon could say about his own first experience in similar circumstances. He had done it into a stainless-steel sink in San Francisco's Hall of Justice, which, while demonstrating a certain degree of fastidiousness, had done little to increase the coroner's confidence in him.

  "Uhh,” Owen said, and on second thought Gideon moved a step away.

  Not that he wasn't a little queasy himself. It wasn't the physical horrors that got to him so much these days, but the pathetic little concomitants of death that were always there, one way or another. While Owen's eyes were jumpily fixed on Tremaine's dreadful face, Gideon's were on the dead man's throat. Not on the naked, purple crease in which the cord had buried itself, but on the loose flesh beneath his chin; the old-man's wattles of M. Audley Tremaine—in life so carefully hidden by those tasteful, elegant ascots—now bared for anyone to see, fold on fold, layered against his bony, naked, elderly chest.

  "Doc,” John said, “you have any way of telling how long he's been dead?"

  "Me? No, you need a pathologist."

  John turned to Owen. “How do we get a pathologist?"

  "We have to ask the state troopers to send somebody up from Juneau."

  "How fast can he get here?"

  "In an hour, if he comes by seaplane. They can land in the cove. That's if somebody's available."

  "An hour,” John said. “Doc, the longer he stays dead the harder it is for anybody to tell anything; you know that. You're the closest thing to a pathologist we've got right now. Can't you come up with a guess? I'm not gonna hold you to it. What about rigor mortis or something?"

  Gideon hesitated. “Well, yes, it looks as if rigor's set in, all right..."

  "Sure,” Owen said. He was making a resolute effort to sound less qualmish. “The hands. They're all clenched."