Better To Rest

by Dana Stabenow

  “Be careful!” she said as a big chunk fell with a loudthunk! Liam disappeared and for a moment she thought he had fallen through. His voice came to her a moment later. “Here it is, Wy. Walk around, though; don’t climb over-the ice is rotten right through.”

  “Imagine my surprise.” She walked around the slab, a scramble of smallish boulders in her way, and found him standing between the slab of ice he had negotiated and the face of the glacier itself, a wall of prismed white with shadowed blue highlights creating narrow, unexpected windows into an inconsistent past. Another dark cave yawned at its base, curving high and large behind the ice. The ground here was a gray mixture of sand and gravel, more textbook moraine. Water was trickling down somewhere, but not much and not in a hurry about it. Winter was coming on fast.

  “Kinda spooky.” Liam’s voice echoed hollowly back at him from the cave.

  “Kinda,” Wy said, her voice short.

  Liam looked at her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t like being this close to the face of a glacier. Glaciers calve. Where do you think that slab you just hauled your butt over came from?”

  He squinted up at the face. “Think one might fall on us?” he said, sounding interested.

  Her shadow lengthened on the ice in front of her, and the sun, well up over the horizon by now, felt warm on her back. “That’s what glaciers do. Where’s that quartz?” She followed his pointing finger. “I don’t see- Oh.”

  He followed her, watched as she extricated a piece of plastic from the sandy gravel. “What’s that?”

  She turned it between her hands. “Transparent, convex. Part of a window, probably, or the windshield.”

  He repressed a shudder, his all-too-active imagination actively pursuing a picture of what the last few moments in the air had been like. Had they known they were going in, those unknown men in the cockpit of this unknown aircraft? He hoped not. He hoped it with fervor.

  Two hours later, their total was three shards of metal that had been twisted like corkscrews-proving to Liam once again just how insubstantial were the craft to which he trusted himself in the air-and Wy’s piece of plastic. Other, more macabre findings included the cuff of a dark blue shirtsleeve, and a tattered dark blue sock containing what appeared to be some small bones held together by what appeared to be sinewy cartilage.

  Liam bagged and tagged everything they found.

  “Nothing with numbers on it, though,” Wy said with a sigh.

  “Is there enough here to tell you what kind of a plane it was?”

  Wy shrugged. “Military, for sure, with that paint job.”

  “When?”

  “Not lately.” She stared up at the face of the glacier.

  “What?”

  “It’s just… you don’t expect to see a glacier giving up an airplane when it calves. A T. Rex, yeah, but a plane? Glaciers have been around a lot longer than planes. Takes a long time, centuries, millennia for a glacier to give up a secret. The face of a glacier, man, it’s thousands of years old. It’s-” She cocked her head. The prickle at the back of her neck was back.

  “What?” he said.

  “Shhh.” She held up a hand. “I thought I heard-”

  There was a distant, cracking sound, and the next thing Liam knew Wy had him in a low tackle that rolled the both of them over the blueberry bushes and beneath the high-standing lip of the chunk of ice he had climbed over. There was aBOOM! that caused chunks of ice to fall from the roof of their shelter, one of which hit Wy’s head and another of which struck Liam smack in the left eye. “Ouch! What the-”

  There was an extended rending sound, deafening in decibel level, so that he couldn’t hear himself speak, let alone talk. The ground shook beneath them. Earthquake? Wy buried her face in his shoulder and he held on. There was a split second of pure, clear silence. The light outside their shelter altered, shifted somehow, and then there was aCRASH! as something immense fell heavily to the ground, and a lingering series of cracks and thumps and bumps as it splintered into pieces and slithered down the gravel moraine.

  He didn’t know how long it took for the ringing in his ears to stop. “Wy?” he croaked. She was unmoving against him. “Wy! Are you all right?”

  He could feel the jolt that went through her. “What? Liam?”

  “Are you all right?”

  He felt her come alive all along the length of her body. “I… yes, I’m all right. You?”

  “I think so. Can we get out?”

  She raised her head and peered over her shoulder at the way they had come. “I think so.” She eeled backward, just enough room for her wriggle over onto her back. She kicked, and something shifted.

  “Wy!”

  “It’s all right. I’m just clearing a path. Follow me out.”

  She didn’t have to ask him twice. He barely remembered to hang on to the evidence bags.

  When they were well clear of the ice and a safe distance from the face of the glacier, they stopped to take stock. Wy winced a little when she stretched. “Something got me in the shoulder.” She looked at him. “You’re going to have a shiner.”

  He touched the swelling surrounding his left eye. “Ouch.”

  Her lips twitched. “And your uniform’s kind of changed color on you. Well, maybe not changed, exactly, but it’s sure bluer than it was.”

  “What?” He looked down to find his dark blue jacket and pants embedded with multiple squashed blueberries. “Oh, hell.” She was looking over his shoulder at the face of the glacier. He looked up and her expression made him straighten. “Wy?”

  “Liam,” Wy breathed, and raised one shaking forefinger.

  The skeleton of the plane was impressed into the face of the glacier like a gigantic fossil, the ribs of the fuselage curving up and around, one wing folded like paper, the tail miraculously upright. The nose was gone and the cockpit with it, but there was a barred white star on the side close to the tail, and small letters or numbers in the same white paint on the upright portion of the tail.

  “Liam,” Wy said again, closing her eyes and opening them again. “Do you see?”

  “Of course I see,” he said.

  She swallowed. “Good. For a minute there, I-”

  “What?” When she didn’t answer he said, “Let’s get the binoculars from the plane.”

  SIX

  Diana Prince was waiting for them when they taxied up to Wy’s tie-down. “Did you find it?”

  “Yeah, we found it.”

  “Damn,” she said. “I figured it was just another one of Teddy and John’s big stories. A pretty good one, I admit, but still.”

  “Me, too,” Liam said. “But it’s there, all right.”

  “What is it?” She looked at Wy.

  “A C-47,” Wy said. “World War Two vintage, if I had to guess.”

  Prince whistled. “Wow. On its way to the Aleutians, maybe?”

  “Maybe. That’s how Elmendorf got built, because of the traffic between Anchorage and the Aleutians after the Japanese invaded.”

  “What kind of shape is it in?”

  “We couldn’t get close to it. It’s sort of stuck in the face of the glacier.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Although I’d say, from the looks of it, and from the most recent evidence of calving, that a big chunk is due off any time now.” Wy remembered the sheer terror of those few moments when she had thought they were both about to be crushed in the fall of ice, and looked at Liam to see him reliving it, too. “All we can do is wait. We got the tail numbers, though.”

  “Great, we’ll be able to trace it.”

  “What are you doing here, Prince?” Liam said. “I thought you were going to check on that shooting out in the road last night. The one old Abe called in.”

  “Yeah, I was.” Prince looked uncomfortable.

  “Something else come up?”

  Only one answer to that. For a state trooper, something else always came up. “Yeah.”

  Suddenly Liam did
n’t like the look on her face. “I’m not going to like this, am I.”

  “No.”

  Prince looked at Wy, who could take a hint of official police business when her nose was rubbed in it. Curiosity was not a trait that was encouraged to flourish in the significant other of a state trooper. She finished tying down the Cub. “I’ve got to pick up the mail for Kagati Lake. See you later.” She included them both in a vague salute and climbed into her truck. Liam saw her watching them in the rearview as she drove off.

  He shook his head once, firmly, and turned to Prince. “What’s up?”

  She took a deep breath. “You’re really not going to like it.”

  She was right.

  Death was careless of dignity. Sometimes Liam thought that that was what he hated most about murder scenes, and this one was no exception. Her flowered housedress was above her knees, revealing the legs he had admired the night before all the way up to the thighs. Her right foot was twisted so that one perfectly polished brown loafer had fallen off. The neat, shining cap of black hair was matted with blood. Her bowels had emptied themselves and the stink of urine and excrement fouled the air.

  Her big brown eyes were open, looking at the ceiling with an expression of vague astonishment, as if she had tried and failed to understand how she came to be there and in that position.

  She never would, now.

  “You got pictures?”

  Prince nodded.

  Liam stepped forward, avoiding the blood, and closed the staring eyes, and then pulled the skirt down to a more decorous level. He turned to Joe Gould, a thin, intense man in his early thirties with a face by Giotto and hair as long and as black as the deceased’s. Gould, Newenham’s sole physician’s assistant, operator of the local ambulance and the nearest thing the town had to a medical examiner, stripped the plastic gloves from his hands. “My guess is death was caused by a blow to the head incurred during a fight. Bruising on the face, knuckles, defensive marks on both arms.”

  “Anything under her fingernails?”

  Gould picked up the corpse’s left hand and displayed it. “She kept her fingernails short and filed smooth. I did scrapings, but I doubt there will be much there.”

  The house was silent, except for the sound of soft weeping and muted whispers coming from the living room. The three of them stared down at the body.

  Mrs. Lydia Tompkins, a seventy-four-year-old housewife, mother of four, grandmother of two, would never again come to the defense of private property with a jar of sun-dried tomatoes.

  “God damn it to hell,” Liam said.

  Prince tried not to flinch away from the rage in his voice and on his face. Gould, impassive as ever, picked up the chair that had been lying on its side and set it at the table. He nodded at the counter and, following his gaze, Liam saw two mugs, both bearing the KAKM Anchorage public television logo, sitting next to the stove. The kettle was full, and cold to the touch. The mugs were empty. A canister of tea bags stood next to them, along with a sugar bowl and a spoon.

  Gould nodded when Liam looked back. “I’d say she was making tea for two and never got the chance.”

  “So she knew him.”

  Gould shrugged. “Doesn’t narrow it down by much. Who doesn’t know everyone else in this town?”

  The kitchen, a large room with windows overlooking the river and a table big enough to seat eight, had last been remodeled before Alaska was a state. The refrigerator was small, round-shouldered and noisy, a sea of white enamel surrounded the propane-fired stove burners, there was no microwave, and the coffeepot was a silver percolator with a black plastic lid. The overhead light was fluorescent behind a translucent, rectangular plastic lens. Yellow flowers bloomed on the wallpaper, matching the yellow and white squares of the shabby linoleum. The narrow cabinets were metal painted white, with chrome handles that looked like they’d come off a ’57 Chevy. The phone was an old black rotary dial, mounted on the wall with a bulletin board beside it. Among the usual kids’ pictures, grocery lists and plumbers’ phone numbers was a tattered Peanuts cartoon, a color one out of the Sunday paper, with Snoopy on his doghouse thinking about the time he’d tried to go over the fence of the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. “No matter where you are, you’re still in the world,” was his conclusion.

  Liam lowered his eyes and saw the jar of sun-dried tomatoes sitting on the counter, shreds of dark red packed into golden olive oil.

  Snoopy was right.

  The room shone with elbow grease, not a coffee ground or a speck of egg yolk or a Cheerio dried hard anywhere. If it hadn’t been for the blood, it would have been spotless, but there was blood, a lot of it, splattered over the small, square porcelain sink, the dish drainer and the dishes in it, the face of the cupboard beneath, and the floor. Most of it had dried to a hard brown.

  “Did you take prints?” Liam said to Prince.

  She nodded, taking refuge in the minutiae of the job. “There were a lot of them.”

  “And you got pictures?”

  “Three rolls.”

  “All right, then.”

  Prince brought out the body bag she had carried into the house. Liam didn’t move.

  After a moment, Prince said tentatively, “Sir?”

  “God damn son of abitch, ” Liam said, and bent to the task.

  Liam and Prince saw the ambulance off and went back inside, through the kitchen and into the large living room made much smaller by all the furniture in it. There were two couches, a recliner and a couple of easy chairs upholstered in three different fabrics in four different patterns, with end tables spaced between. A wicker basket held copies of theLadies’ Home Journal, Reader’s Digest, Jo-Ann Fabrics flyers,Coin World, the Denali Seed catalog, and theNew York Times Book Review. A jumble of toys spilled out of a toy box in the shape of a large hollow plastic frog with lime-green skin and yellow eyes. A television, big and black and brand-new, dominated one corner, but what drew the eye was the window that took up most of the east wall. Like the kitchen, this room faced the river. Lydia Tompkins must have enjoyed some spectacular sunrises.

  The weeping sound was coming from two women who sat close together on one couch, and the whispers from two men on the opposite couch. They looked nothing alike, and yet it was evident at first glance that all four were the children of Lydia Tompkins.

  Liam stepped forward. “I’m Liam Campbell of the Alaska state troopers. Who found her?”

  Prince frowned a little at his blunt question, but after a surreptitious look at the expression on his face decided not to intervene.

  One of the women blew her nose and rose to her feet. “I did.”

  “And you are?”

  “Betsy Amakuk.”

  “You’re her daughter?”

  “We all are. I mean, this is my sister, Karen.”

  “Karen Tompkins,” the other woman said, standing.

  “And my brothers.”

  The brothers followed suit.

  “Stan Tompkins.”

  “Jerry Tompkins.”

  Betsy was large and regal in clean blue jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt with the boat nameF/V Daisy Rose on the front. She wore pearl studs in her ears, her dark hair was immaculate, and her eyes and nose were red. Karen was petite and kittenish in hip-hugger cords and a cropped T-shirt. Her hair was short and streaked with gold and spiked with gel. Thin silver bracelets jangled from both wrists, and silver earrings touched her shoulders. Her belly button was pierced, and her mascara had run.

  Stan, burly, tanned and fit, looked at Liam out of assessing eyes. His haircut looked left over from the marines, and his Carhartt’s, though worn, were clean and well-kept, as was the brown plaid shirt beneath them. Jerry, on the other hand, was thin and nervous, with eyes that couldn’t seem to stay focused on any one object for very long. He wore a dark blue windbreaker over a T-shirt with a large hole showing and a pair of jeans worn through at both knees.

  They all looked to be in their late forties or early fifties, Betsy the eldest and, if
he had to guess, Karen the youngest. He said to Betsy, “What time did you find your mother?”

  “I don’t know.” She blew her nose again and looked at Stan. “What time did I call you, Stan?”

  “About two o’clock, I think.”

  “Did you call him the moment you found her?”

  “You understand,” Prince said, “we have to ask these questions, Mrs. Amakuk. We’re very sorry for your loss.”

  Liam glared at her and she shut up. He repeated, “Did you call your brother as soon as you found your mother?”

  “Yes. No. Wait. I- No, I called the ambulance first.” Her eyes filled again. “Even though I knew it was no use. She was cold when I touched her.”

  Rigor had begun to set in. The house was cool. A murder before breakfast, then, most likely. “Did you touch anything else?”

  “What? I… no. No, I don’t think so.”

  “The stove wasn’t on?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anyone leaving the house as you arrived?”

  “No.”

  To Stan, Liam said, “And you came as soon as Betsy called?”

  “Yes. Well, my wife had to come down to the boat to tell me Betsy had called and wanted me up to Mom’s.”

  To Betsy, Liam said, “So actually you called Stan’s wife.”

  “No. Well, yes, she answered the phone at their house.”

  “You might want to ease up a little here, sir,” Prince murmured from the background.

  Liam, who knew he was being a jerk, didn’t seem to be able to turn it off. “Why,” he said to Betsy, “did you come to the house today?”

  A spark of anger glowed briefly in her eyes but she kept her voice level. “I come by every afternoon for coffee.”

  Liam thought of the two mugs on the counter, the box of tea bags, the full kettle, the empty percolator. “Your mother lived here alone?”