Icy Clutches

Chapter 9

John tossed his shoulder bag into the back seat of the green Park Service car, ducked to get through the door, and slid in. “But what are you saying did happen, Doc? That Tremaine killed this guy with this ice ax, and a few minutes later this avalanche just happened to come along and conveniently bury everything?” He pulled the door closed after him.

"And conveniently kill the only two witnesses?” Owen put in, turning the key in the ignition.

"And conveniently not kill Tremaine?” added John. “Just bury him up to his eyeballs in the ice for two days?"

Gideon pulled his own door closed and settled himself in the front passenger seat. “What are you ganging up on me for? You're the ones who're supposed to figure all the hard stuff out. What do I know? I'm just a simple bone man."

John muttered something, finished off the last of his candy bar, licked his fingers, and stuck the wrapper in the pocket of his denim jacket.

His plane, a single-engine two-seater with “Kwakiutl Airlines” stenciled on the doors, had been early. When Owen and Gideon had arrived at the lonely cedar-board longhouse that was the Gustavus/Glacier Bay Airport terminal building, the big FBI agent had been sprawled on a wooden bench, sipping from a cardboard cup of coffee from one vending machine and munching a Butterfinger bar from the other.

"No breakfast,” had been his wistful greeting.

"I figured you wouldn't get a chance to eat,” Owen had said. “I asked them to have something for us at the lodge when we get there."

John had brightened immediately, but it hadn't stopped him from getting another cup of coffee and a second Butterfinger. Gideon and Owen had gotten coffee too, and for fifteen minutes they had sat in the otherwise deserted waiting room talking over the case, trying and rejecting one murder scenario after another.

The only thing they'd agreed on was that the murder was probably unpremeditated. Why would Tremaine or anybody else have planned to kill someone out on Tirku Glacier, with the others right there and nobody else within fifty miles? Why not wait until they were all back in Gustavus, where there'd be a couple of hundred other people to serve as potential suspects too? As it turned out, the avalanche did just happen to come along and bury everything, but there had been no way to foresee that.

No, it had been unpremeditated, spur of the moment, a crime of passion; perhaps the outcome of a fight. The logic of the situation pointed to that. And-more important, in Gideon's mind-so did the damaged mandible.

Now Owen twisted the steering wheel, backed away from the terminal, and swung out of the parking lot. The airport in Gustavus was only eleven miles from the lodge, but it seemed as if it were on another continent. Southeastern Alaska, as Owen had told Gideon on the way out, was a land of microclimates. There were no towering hemlocks or spruce around Gustavus, no pleasant green hummocks of mossy undergrowth. Here there was just a drab, level, tundra-like plain, windswept and gloomy, alongside the gray waters of Icy Strait. No wonder they had put the airport here. No mountains to fly in over, no trees to get tangled up in, and not much in the way of bulldozing to get the place flat in the first place.

Owen edged the car onto the gravel road and turned right, toward the lodge. It was the only direction the road went. They drove past two rustic A-frames, the only structures in sight besides the terminal. The one on the left housed a smoked-salmon business, the other an arts-and-crafts shop. Both were closed. Between them a brave, brightly colored wooden sign announced “Puffin Mall. Hours 5-6 P.M. every day, June-September.” That was when the daily Alaska Airlines flight from Juneau made its turnaround stop.

"All right, try this on,” John said. “What if we jumped on the idea that Tremaine's the killer a little too fast? What makes us so sure it's him?"

"Well, he's the only one who came out of it alive,” Gideon said. “And he sure was in a hurry to get off the subject of that ice ax yesterday."

"That doesn't mean he killed anyone."

"I don't know. Even if he didn't, he must have seen what happened. He was right there."

"So?"

"So why didn't he ever say anything about it? It's been thirty years. He's talked about the avalanche in public hundreds of times."

"Maybe he was protecting somebody."

"Protecting somebody's memory?"

"Sure, why not? Or maybe he was saving it for this book he's writing, waiting until he could cash it in for big bucks."

"It's possible,” Gideon said. He doubted it, but John was right to keep his mind open.

"What the hell,” John said, “I'll be talking to him soon enough, see what he has to say. To the others too. Look, I think it'll work a lot better if we keep this whole business about the hole in the skull to ourselves for another day or so, okay?"

Gideon and Owen exchanged a look.

Owen spoke. “Uh, I'm afraid we have a small problem there."

John leaned back resignedly. “Oh, boy,” he said, “don't tell me."

"Sorry, my fault,” Gideon said, and went on quickly. “I don't suppose you've had a chance to put together any kind of a file on the case yet? Newspaper articles…?"

"There isn't much,” John said, leaning across the back seat to slide open a zippered pouch in his bag, “but I brought out copies of what I have.” He held up a thin sheaf of papers with a buff-colored cardboard cover and an Acco fastener at the side.

Gideon took it and turned to the first page. "Skagway Herald, July 27, 1960” was written in longhand across the top. The headline beneath was “Avalanche Near Glacier Bay. Scientific Research Team Feared Lost.’ He read on with interest.

"About this breakfast,” John said to Owen. “I hope we're talking real food here-eggs, bacon, that kind of thing?"

"Whatever you want,” Owen said over his shoulder. “We'll be there in ten minutes; 8:45 at the latest."

"Good, I just might make it,” John said, leaning comfortably back. Then, abruptly, he sat up straight, swiveling his head to stare at a rapidly receding dark shape in the roadside foliage. “What the hell was that?"

"Bear,” Owen said casually. “Brown, I think. Maybe black. Hard to tell the difference this time of year."

"Jesus Christ,” John muttered, settling back and closing his eyes, “where did they send me?"

Shirley Yount banged her coffee cup into its saucer. “It's twenty minutes after eight. Maybe somebody ought to go knock on his door."

This was said with more relish than impatience. Like the others, she was eager to get at Tremaine, who had been on the run from them since the electrifying news of thirty-year-old foul play on Tirku had buzzed so excitedly around the bar the night before. Tremaine had not appeared for dinner, and now here he was, going on half an hour late for their daily breakfast meeting.

"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.