Icy Clutches

Chapter 15

The daily turnaround flight between Juneau and Gustavus is surely one of the most spectacular jet flights in America. Going southeast, toward Juneau, you leave the flat Gustavus plain, with Glacier Bay tilting on your left, rise quickly over Icy Strait and the huddled green Chilkat Mountains, and wing out over the Inside Passage. Below, in the muted blue water, are the thousand forested, uninhabited islands of the Alexander Archipelago, and a few miles to the east the rearing, gleaming white chain of the Boundary Range. Beyond them, in British Columbia, appears the even grander, whiter mass of the great Coast Range, stretching out of sight to the north and south. Toward the end of the flight, the vast Juneau ice field comes into view (larger than the state of Rhode Island, the pilot informs you over the public-address system), and, finally, as the plane wheels and drops toward Juneau Airport, the colossal, frozen river that is Mendenhall Glacier, impressive even after Glacier Bay.

All this in twelve minutes’ air time, in a 727 that never gets more than four thousand feet off the ground and seems to float between the two airports like a dirigible with wings. Few passengers do anything during the twelve minutes but stare out the windows, struck dumb. But Julie and Gideon hadn't even glanced up, hadn't stopped talking.

They hadn't stopped talking since he'd met her boat at the pier at a little after four, Persuading her to play hooky for a day had taken all of thirty seconds. Trying to explain what was going on had taken the rest of the two hours, even with John's help on the drive to Gustavus. Small wonder. When she'd started off that morning the only mystery had been the pierced skull from 1960, and that had been mystery enough. But by the time Gideon saw her again nine hours later, Tremaine had been found dead; the manuscript had disappeared; Burton Wu had come, made his pronouncements, and gone; Elliott Fisk's journal had been stolen; and dark, old motives were popping to the surface like fizz in a glass of Alka-Seltzer.

It had been a hell of a day.

"So what's your working hypothesis?” Julie asked as the wheels touched down. “That Tremaine was killed to keep him quiet about the other murder?"

"Who has a working hypothesis?” Gideon pushed back into his seat against the strain of the backthrust as the plane touched down, and waited for the engine roar to quiet. “But if I had one, I guess that'd be it."

"But who would even know what happened out there, besides Tremaine? Everybody else was killed in-” She made one of her pitiful attempts at snapping her fingers. “I forgot. John thinks Dr. Judd might not really have been that sick, that he might have followed them out there and killed Steven Fisk himself and then gotten back out before the avalanche."

"No, that's just an outside possibility. I don't think he really believes it."

Julie unstrapped her seat belt as the plane rolled to a stop, and stood up.

"What do you think?"

"I don't think it's too likely either.” He flicked open his seat belt, stretched, and stood up too. “What are we saying-"

Her hand went out. “Gideon-"

But she was too late. Straightening, he thumped his head on the overhead rack. “Damn!"

"It's just amazing,” she said. “You do it every time. You never miss. Some physical anthropologist in five hundred years is probably going to go bonkers trying to figure out how your skull got so lumpy."

Wincing, Gideon rubbed his head. “Thank you for your concern,” he grumbled, and looked at his hand. “No blood, anyway."

A flicker of worry crossed her face, like a shadow. “You're all right, aren't you?"

"Sure,” he said with a quick smile, “I built up a callus there years ago.” He reached up for their bags and squeezed her hand as they headed out of the near-empty plane. Julie squeezed back.

"Anyway,” he said, “what would we be saying Judd did? Went sneaking over the glacier after them? You can't sneak over a glacier like Tirku, not without being seen. So, if not for a fortuitous avalanche, which he couldn't have predicted, there would have been three witnesses to the murder, or at least three people who saw him there."

Julie nodded. “That's so. And Tremaine himself was right there. Why would he keep quiet about it all these years? From what John said, there wasn't any love lost between the two of them."

They entered the terminal building ("Wipe your feet,” the no-nonsense sign on the door told them), walked past the ten-foot-high stuffed polar bear that greets incoming passengers, and went out into the misty drizzle.

The fifteen-minute trip downtown was made in Juneau's version of an airport limousine, an old school bus painted blue, with MGT (for Mendenhall Glacier Transport) on the side. The route took them through the Mendenhall wetlands, a bleak silt plain left behind by the retreating glacier, then along Gastineau Channel, Juneau's sole avenue to the Inside Passage and the outside world. As with Glacier Bay-as with much of coastal Alaska-the only ways in or out of the state capital were by air and by water. The one highway out of Juneau led thirty-six miles to Auke Bay. And back.

As they walked the three blocks from the bus stop to the old Baranof Hotel on this dreary, drizzly late afternoon, Juneau looked like the isolated outpost it was, huddled uneasily in its narrow fjord at the foot of hulking Mount Juneau. Great snowfields clung to the mountain's steep flanks directly above them, seemingly ready to break free and come down on their heads at the next stiff breeze. Even the heavy sky seemed to press down on the little town; rain dripped from a layer of lowering clouds that smothered the tops of the surrounding mountains, closing in the fjord like a pewter lid.

The city itself was appropriately subdued in the face of this sullen, menacing Nature. The turn-of-the-century street lamps on Franklin Street glowed a gloomy yellow, the tourist shops that were the main tenants of the false-front, frontier-style wooden buildings were closed and dark, the street traffic minimal, the rainswept sidewalks nearly empty. Only the bars were open-the Red Dog Saloon, the Sourdough, Mike's; open and rowdy, to judge from the sounds. An occasional group of two or three men, mostly in parkas and rubber boots, shoved their way through one set of swinging doors and wavered half a block to the next one.

"Never arrive in a strange place at night on an empty stomach” had been Abe Goldstein's first rule to his class on anthropological field technique. “In the dark and with a low blood-sugar level, new places don't look so hot."

Well, it wasn't quite dark, just midway through the long northern twilight, but it had been six hours since lunch, and Juneau, famed for its beauty, didn't look so hot.

"Except for the concrete sidewalks,” Julie said, moving closer to him, “we could be in 1890.” She sounded a little low on blood sugar too.

They had splurged on a reservation at the Baranof, Juneau's grand old dowager of a hotel, and their spirits lifted when they walked in. Burnished wood paneling, Art Deco light fixtures, gold-framed mirrors, oil paintings, a grand piano in the lobby.

Civilization. Out of 1890 and into 1935.

They checked in, went up to their room (with a Mozart horn concerto playing sweetly over the elevator speaker), washed up, and came back down to the Bubble Lounge for a drink. Their order for dry Manhattans, which seemed just the thing for 1935, was taken by a tuxedoed waiter who bowed when he received it.

Julie laughed. “I was just thinking. This is exactly the kind of place John hates, isn't it?"

"John hates any place where the waiters dress better than the customers."

The amber drinks, in cut-glass cocktail glasses, were placed carefully on the table with another bow.

"Getting back to Dr. Judd,” Julie said thoughtfully. “Suppose we change the premise just a little."

"Fine. Did we have a premise?"

"What if Judd didn't kill him before the avalanche, but after?"

"After the avalanche?” Gideon looked up from his first swallow. It was all right, but it made him remember why dry Manhattans had gone out of fashion. “But Fisk would have been dead already."

"Why would he have been dead already? Tremaine was in the avalanche and he wasn't dead. Maybe Judd went up there, and he found Fisk unconscious or dying, and finished him off with the ax.” She shook her head wonderingly. “What did I talk about before I met you?"

"After the avalanche,” Gideon repeated slowly. “Now why didn't I think of that? Why didn't John?"

She grinned, pleased. “You didn't?"

"It never occurred to us. And it would answer a lot of questions. But-"

"Ah,” she said sadly.

"Well, there'd still be the question of why Tremaine kept it to himself all this time."

"He wouldn't have known anything about it. He was probably unconscious. He fell into a crevasse, remember?"

For a moment Gideon almost thought she had something. “No. Why bother to kill Tremaine now if he hadn't seen anything?"

"Um. Yes, that's a problem. Maybe John can work that out."

"And just what was Tremaine going to write about that was so sensational if he didn't know about the murder? Come to think of it, he did know about the murder because he mentioned it to his publisher."

"Well,” Julie said glumly, “I don't see that you and John have come up with anything better."

"You're sure right there,” he agreed, and took another pull, beginning to unwind.

They went over the possibilities again: a jealous Steven Fisk as murderer, with James Pratt as victim; a brooding, vengeful Pratt as murderer, with Fisk as victim; a humiliated Judd as killer, with Fisk as victim-or maybe Pratt as victim. Just because no motive had come to light yet didn't mean there wasn't one. And of course, Tremaine as murderer, with either Fisk or Pratt as murderee.

"A nice how-de-do,” he said.

"And don't forget about Jocelyn Yount,” said Julie. “If she was as big as her sister she could have swung a pretty mean ax."

"That's true. And yes, she was big. But why would she want to kill anybody?"

"Because she was fed up. With a possessive, violent boyfriend on one side, and some creepy guy sniffing around her on the other, I wouldn't blame her. For being fed up, I mean."

"It's possible,” Gideon said, for what felt like the fiftieth time that day. He rotated his glass slowly on the table. “We just need more data. We can't do any more with what we have."

"You'll get it,” Julie said. “That's why we're here, right?"

"That, and because I thought we could use a little vacation. From our vacation.” He was glad he'd asked her to come, glad to be off alone with her. He watched her sip her drink, watched her small, square, competent, sexy hands embrace the glass, looked at the moisture glistening on her lips.

"Uh-oh,” Julie said.

"What?"

"I recognize that look,"

"What look?” But of course she was right. “That's love,” he told her.

"That is not love. I know love, and that isn't it."

"Sure it is. Well, partly, it is.” He leaned closer. “Uh, I don't suppose I could interest you in some spousal activities before dinner?"

"Actually I was thinking of taking a shower before dinner."

"Gee, me too."

"I suppose,” she said, “if we took one together it would save time."

"And water,” Gideon pointed out.

"Oh, well,” Julie said, pushing back her chair, “in that case…"

"I don't know how much time we saved,” Julie said from the bathroom. She was still tinkering with her hair, which seemed somehow to have gotten wet under the shower spray.

"I know we sure didn't save any soap,” Gideon said from the bedroom. “Or water, not that Juneau seems to have much of a water problem."

"Is it still raining?"

"I don't think so.” He walked to the window. “Nope, it stopped. Wow, look at this."

She came to join him. “Wow,” she agreed.

Their eighth-floor room looked out over the town and across Gastineau Channel. An enormous, midnight-blue cruise ship had just anchored; a sleek, stately five-decker with big, square, house-style windows instead of portholes. Four small launches were chugging steadily back and forth between ship and shore, depositing passengers onto the pier at the foot of Franklin Street.

And Juneau was springing to life to greet them, like a mechanical toy that someone had just plugged in. They could almost hear the gears creaking into action. Franklin Street was going into motion as the advance troops from the ship made their way up it, tentatively and somewhat suspiciously. (Were they arriving on empty stomachs?) Lights were blinking on in the shops ("Gold Nugget Jewelry,” “Arctic Circle Gifts,” “Alaska Trading Post"), sidewalk tables were being set up outside of restaurants, and all of downtown suddenly seemed to be crackling with noise and life.

Hokey, maybe, but cheerful and welcoming too. Even the mountain was starting to look friendly. They abandoned their plan to eat in the Baranof's sedate and elegant Gold Room and went back out into the now-bustling 1890s in search of typical Alaskan fare.

They wound up at the Armadillo Tex-Mex Cafe on South Franklin, a steamy, funky, homey place with plastic red-and-white tablecloths, waitresses in jeans and aprons, and a stuffed, seven-foot-high saguaro cactus near the door. John would have loved it, they agreed.

Over surprisingly good fajitas and beans (the owner turned out to be from Austin), they found themselves back on the same old subject without knowing how they got there.

"I don't think we should completely forget about Tremaine,” Julie said. “Just because he got killed himself later on hardly proves he didn't do it."

"So John pointed out. But why would he want to murder Pratt or Fisk?"

"Pratt, I don't know. But didn't you say he was stealing Fisk's ideas? Maybe he thought if Steve was dead he could get away with it better."

"Except that I don't see him planning to do something like that out on the glacier, with the other two around. No, this had to be a spur-of-the-moment thing."

"Well, maybe it was. Maybe Tremaine did it after the avalanche. Maybe the other two were killed in it, and Steven was hurt, and Tremaine saw his chance and sort of nudged him along."

"Into the great beyond,” Gideon said. “Uh-uh. According to the newspaper, both of Tremaine's arms were broken. Plus a fractured skull and a broken leg and a few other little nuisances. He didn't hit anybody with an ice ax. Not after the avalanche."

"Rats,” Julie said.

Rats was right. The pieces just wouldn't go together to make a coherent picture. He no longer believed that Tremaine had been the murderer, as satisfying as that idea had been. Maybe he'd been an accomplice. Very likely a witness. Surely he'd known something about it, and he'd been killed on account of it. The Law of Interconnected Monkey Business so decreed. Or if not decreed, strongly suggested. So far so good, but right there was where things came unraveled. If not Tremaine, the killer had to have been one of the other people on the glacier. But they had all died. So who cared enough to kill him over it almost thirty years later? Who besides him could even know what had happened?

Back to Judd? Judd, with his faked mosquito bite, lumbering after them over the glacier? Anna? Had Anna not spent the day on her frequency distributions after all, but hired her own plane, followed them out there…He shook his head. Every possibility was sillier than the one before. And more full of holes.

"I wish,” he said with a sigh, “that we could Figure out who that skull fragment belongs to. It makes it just a little hard to solve a murder when you don't know who the victim is."

"Will Professor Worriner be able to help, do you think?"

"I hope so. All we can do is compare the new material to the fragments he identified as Pratt's and Fisk's back in 1964. With luck, we'll be able to make some kind of positive match. Or positively exclude one of them, which would be just as good."

"You will,” Julie said. “I have every confidence."