Nothing Gold Can Stay

EIGHT

Nenevok Creek, September 2

The bed shifted as Mark got stealthily to his feet. Clothing rustled as he dressed, the door creaked as it opened and creaked again as it closed. Rebecca rolled to her back and stared at the ceiling, at the patched, cracked, stained ceiling of uninsulated plywood four-by-eights cut haphazardly to fit. The double bed was shoved into a corner, and the air blew cold through the chinks. They’d used the down comforter all summer except for eleven days at the beginning of July.

Now it was September. September 2, four days from a flight home.

She was going home. There was no doubt of that. She was going home with or without her husband. She was going back home, going back to Anchorage, if not to that nice split-level in the old neighborhood in Spenard with the thirty-year-old prickly rose bush bending the back fence out of shape and the thirty-one-year-old birch coating the lawn with leaves. The yard sloped down in front of the house, and when the four different varieties of poppies she had planted and so carefully nursed through their infancies were in bloom it was like something out of Disney.

It was only a house. She could plant poppies in another front yard. This time she could plant some of those flashy Himalayan Blues. And raspberry bushes, dozens of them, so she could make framboise, and give it away to all her friends at Christmas.

Because she was going home. Mark could stay here, a thousand miles from nowhere, and wash dirt until the creek froze in around his legs if that was what he wanted. To honor and keep, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live. She had believed in those words. She was going home, with or without her husband.

There was enough water left in the kettle on the woodstove to fill the coffeepot. She used some of it to make a single cup of coffee and the rest to take a spit bath. She dressed in jeans and a tank top beneath a short-sleeved T-shirt beneath a long-sleeved flannel shirt. She would have worn long underwear if she’d thought to bring any with her. She hadn’t been warm since they had left Anchorage. She wanted electric baseboard heating in her new house, and a thermostat she could crank up to eighty degrees.

She wanted another cup of coffee, but the water was all gone. She put on two pairs of socks and a pair of short leather hiking boots, picked up the plastic five-gallon jerry can and headed for the door. At the last moment, she paused next to the counter and picked up the paring knife, a three-inch blade on the three-and-a-half-inch black plastic handle. Mark made fun of it and tried to get her to use the slim, deadly skinning knife he’d bought for her, in its own leather sheath meant to be threaded onto her hand-tooled leather belt, but she liked the paring knife. It was short and sharp, and it served for cutting up vegetables and trimming bead cord.

There was a stalk of fireweed next to the creek where they got their water. She’d noticed yesterday that the last group of blooms at the very top of the stalk had opened, and she wanted to bring them back to the cabin with her. She was designing a bracelet, a wide cuff with picoted edges and a raised pattern in a floral motif. She had two tubes of size eleven seed beads, one Ruby Rainbow Matte and one Purple Blue Transparent Matte, hoarded as her reward for sticking out the summer. They were as close to the color of the fireweed blooms as she had in her private stash, and the blooms would make a lovely motif for the bracelet. She would give it to Nina for Christmas. Nina loved reds and purples and hot pinks. Her Volkswagen Beetle was a silvery fuchsia. She’d always gone more conservative with her car colors.

She left the cabin door standing open and trod the path to the stream with soft, carefully placed steps, listening for anything that might be beyond the bushes. She no longer started at every rustle or creak, but neither did she ignore them.

She hoped she wouldn’t run into Mark. She hoped he was prospecting up the creek somewhere.

It had been a long, still night. Neither of them had slept, but they hadn’t talked, either. Rebecca had said all she was going to say, and Mark was still confident he could change her mind. It was the second of September. Wyanet Chouinard and the Nushagak Air Taxi would come on the sixth of September. Four days, if she counted today. She’d made it through three months. She could make it through four days.

The brush opened up at the creek, where a small slope of reddish dirt fanned into a narrow gravel bank. The rocks were round and flat, and many of them gleamed white and sparkled in the early morning light. Quartz. Quartz and gold were found together, Mark said. She thought of the half dozen tiny vials filled with dust and the one nugget the size and shape of a kidney bean back in the cabin, the fruit of a summer’s labor, and shook her head.

She filled the jerry can. The fireweed was still there, still blooming. She used the paring knife to cut the stalk just below the last set of blooms, feeling slightly guilty as she did so. It had been perfect just as it was.

She sat down on the bank with her elbows on her knees and looked at the fireweed. She knew a little about herbs thanks to Amy Kvasnikof, who worked at Southcentral Foundation in Anchorage and who had come to Pedersen, Barcott, Tsonger, Jefferson and Moonin for help in a divorce case. Rebecca had worked on the case with Pete Pedersen, and she and Amy had become good friends.

Amy was from Nanwalek, what they used to call English Bay, and she had learned about Alaskan herbs at her grandmother’s knee. Fireweed leaves could be used to brew tea for indigestion, and dried fireweed root could be ground and mixed into a paste with bear grease and used as an ointment on sores or bug bites. It had its culinary purposes as well; young fireweed made for fine salad greens, and the tea didn’t have to be medicinal.

Amy had given Rebecca a book, Eleanor Viereck’sAlaska’s Wilderness Medicines, and Rebecca had brought it with her, thinking she might spend part of the summer looking for the herbs listed there. The book described the herbs in alphabetical order, each with a black-and-white drawing of the plant, and at the back of the book there was a glossary and a couple of lists, one A Therapeutic Use of Alaskan Plants. Under A it had Aphrodisiac-angelica. Under B it had Baby bath-rose leaf tea.

Baby. Babies. Rebecca stared hard across the stream, at the trunk of a cottonwood lying on its side. She wanted babies, at least one, preferably two. She’d always wanted them. She’d talked to Mark about it before they got married, and he had said sure, just not right away. “Let’s give ourselves time to play first,” he had said, and grinned, leaving no doubt as to what kind of play he meant.

It wasn’t as if she had disagreed with him, but this year they had celebrated their seventh anniversary. Rebecca was now thirty-two years old, and she was beginning to have visions of pushing a stroller and a walker at the same time. She’d tried to reopen the discussion with Mark over the Christmas holiday, but at the same time he started to tell her about this defunct gold mine for sale in the Wood River Mountains. He’d always had a hankering to look for gold, he told her, although in seven years of marriage this was the first she’d heard of it. He seemed so excited and so enthusiastic, though, and Rebecca tried so hard to be the good wife. This was obviously something Mark wanted very badly. How could she say no?

Halfway through the summer she began to wonder how much the gold mine was a ruse to avoid the baby talk. Moving out here, in the middle of nowhere, no hospital, no doctor, no pharmacy, how could she have a baby out here? The nearest school was in Newenham; how could she raise a child out here? She wanted to drive her child to soccer practice and ice-skating classes, and to the movies and Baskin-Robbins afterward. She wanted to go to parent-teacher conferences. She wanted to join the PTA. She wanted to shop at Gap for Kids and Gymboree.

Mark knew how she felt. They had talked about all the important things, children (not now, but no more than two later), money (one joint and two separate checking accounts, only one credit card each, both paid off at the end of the month, take care of the upkeep on the house first and the retirement fund second), where to live in Anchorage (Turnagain or Spenard), where to retire (Alaska, not Outside). They’d made separate lists and discussed each item, each taking care to respect the other’s viewpoint, reaching accommodation without too much blood on the floor. It wasn’t just the sex, which was thrilling, it was also a shared commitment to a long life together and a shared determination to make that life the best it could be. They had been very pleased with themselves, and Rebecca for one had marched up that aisle in the full conviction that she knew exactly and precisely what she was doing and that she had never done anything more right in her life.

He had bought the gold mine without consulting her first, emptying out their joint checking account and explaining it away afterward as “I had to, honey, he had ten other buyers waiting in line. I would have lost the deal if I hadn’t jumped on it quick.”

“I thought we were going to start a family this year,” she had said. “I thought that was why we’d saved all that money.”

He had laughed, a quick, excited laugh, and kissed her soundly. “We’ve got all the time in the world to start a family. We’ve got time to start a gold mine.” His hands wandered. “Besides, we’re not done having fun yet.”

Like always, her knees had given way beneath the onslaught.

It isn’t all his fault, she thought, still staring at the log across the stream, still twisting the fireweed between her fingers. I should have been more forceful. I should have insisted we sit down and talk about it, then and there. But he distracted me. Like he always distracts me.

“You know what’s wrong with Mark?”

“What?”

“He’s too good in the sack.”

Remembering the conversation with Nina at City Market, Rebecca realized just how often Mark had resolved their differences in bed.

It was ironic that here, in this place she feared and despised, in this place to which Mark had seduced her into coming, here she had found the time and the solitude to think, to reflect, to learn to see a different side of their relationship. It shamed her to realize that all he had to do was lay hands on her and she would do anything he wanted.

“Hey!”

Mark’s shout jerked her to her feet. She turned. He wasn’t there.

“Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Get out of there!”

The sound of a shot echoed off the walls of the canyon.

She grabbed for her waist, and only then remembered that she had been so angry at her husband that morning that she had forgotten to strap on the.357 before stepping outside.

For the first time that summer since the bear charged her, she was outside the cabin and unarmed.

Nuklunek Bluff, September 2

The air was very still that morning, probably why the sound of the shot traveled so far.

“Hey,” John said. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah,” Teddy said, head cocked. “Warehouse Mountain?”

“Too far. Nenevok Lake, maybe.”

“Or maybe the creek.”

“The gold mine,” John said, and burped.

“Maybe she shot him.”

“Maybe he shot her.”

They both thought back to their first sight of Rebecca Hanover, and said simultaneously, “Nah.”

They stood, listening. There were no further shots.

“A bear, maybe,” John said.

Teddy made a face, and pointed in a vague, easterly direction with a half-empty bottle of beer. “You think we should go see?”

John drained his own bottle and set it down with exaggerated care inside the almost empty second case. “Sure,” he said, and picked his way carefully to where his rifle stood leaning against a tree trunk.

Teddy watched him go, bleary-eyed. “What about Wy?”

“Why?”

“Wy. Our pickup. Noonish. Round there, anyway. Maybe four. Five?”

John made a regally dismissive gesture with one hand. “Be back in plenty of time.”

Teddy, flush with beer, gave no thought to the various areas of dense brush and swampy muskeg between them and the shot they had heard, and agreed without a blink.

Kagati Lake, September 2

“I’ve got to get home,” Wy said. “I’m supposed to ferry a couple of fishermen back from Outuchiwenet Mountain, and I’ve got a couple of hunters to pick up this afternoon. I’ll need to refuel before I head out. See you back at the house?”

“Okay.” Liam squeezed her hand and let go. Prince pretended not to notice, and continued to pretend not to notice as Liam stood watching Wy climb into her plane, start the engine, taxi and take off to the north. The plane banked left and came back down the strip at two hundred feet and waggled its wings. Liam raised an arm in reply and turned back to Prince. “So nothing else, no similar incidents reported out this way?”

“No, sir.”

“No burglaries, robberies, no assaults?”

“And no murders.”

“I don’t like it,” Liam said.

“I don’t either, but we don’t have a lot to go on,” she said. “I sent the prints in with the body. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” She paused.

“What?”

“You sure about the family?”

“Yes. They were all at fish camp, anyway, all except Opal. She stayed behind to do her duty by the U.S. Postal Service. Come rain, shine, sleet or fish camp, the mail must go through.”

“Who checks their mail here, sir?”

“There are about thirty-two people in the immediate vicinity.” He caught her eye. “Well, okay, within a day’s hike. From the look of things, most of the people with mailboxes here don’t make the trip over that often, they let the mail pile up and come in once or twice a month to collect it. She ran a little sundries store, too: over-the-counter medicines, magazines, candy, like that. It would be known, so she’d get the occasional stranger.”

“Maybe somebody else saw him.”

“Maybe somebody else did,” he said.

They borrowed a couple of four-wheelers from Leonard and set off. It took them the rest of the morning and all of the afternoon, following the map Leonard had made for them. Everyone was shocked at Opal’s murder. No one had seen anyone strange. Very few had alibis, but then very few had motive, either.

Dusty Moore was a man in his fifties with a much younger Yupik wife and five children under the age of eight, all of whom swore that Dusty had been right there with them every day since coming back from a supply run to Newenham in May. He didn’t deny wanting the postmaster job, but in an eerie echo of Leonard’s own words said, “Jesus, who would want it this way?”

He escorted them firmly to the edge of his property and left them there.

“Hell,” Prince said.

“Hell,” Liam agreed. “Well, I guess they can’t all be easy.”

“If this yo-yo-”

“I know. And chances are we can’t do anything unless and until he hits again.”

Prince’s lips were tight. “I don’t like it.”

“What do you want to do, Prince? Set out across country? In what direction? We looked everywhere on the Nunapitchuks’ homestead for a trail and didn’t find squat, except for game trails. We can’t follow them all. Maybe we could bring in some dogs, pick up a trail that way. Chances of that are, oh, maybe a trillion to one, and it’s even odds they’ll track down the local grizzly first, which would be bad for the dogs and worse for us.”

He stopped, ashamed of having lost his temper. The Nunapitchuks seemed like nice people: hardworking, self-sufficient, capable, intelligent, everything he admired. He didn’t like the thought that he was about to let them down. He sighed. “We won’t close the file. The M.E. will be able to tell us about the weapon, and the prints will go into the system. We’ll put out a bulletin, circulate it among all the air taxi services in the Bay area in case he tries to fly out and gives himself away. Of course, he’ll have to give himself away because we don’t have a clue as to what he looks like. He could be a woman for all we know, or a Texas horned toad, or a little green man from Mars.” He felt himself getting angry all over again, and took a deep breath and blew it out explosively.

“Canneries,” Prince said. “They could pass out copies to their fishermen. In case he tried to hitch a ride downriver.”

“Most of the canneries are closed for the winter,” Liam said shortly.

“Oh. Right.”

“Shit,” Liam said.

They thanked Leonard for the loan of the four-wheelers, made vague noises when he asked them what they had discovered, and got the hell out of there.

The Cessna 185 had been in the air less than twenty minutes when the call came in. Liam, as usual preoccupied with holding the plane up in the air by sheer effort of will, didn’t hear it until Prince turned up the volume. “This is eight-two Victor November to the distress call, say again?”

A calm, confident female drawl repeated, “This is Alaska Airlines one-three-three calling any small aircraft in the area of Nenevok Creek.”

Prince and Liam exchanged glances, and simultaneously looked down at their watches. It was seven minutes past six. “What’s the last flight into Anchorage?” Liam said.

Prince keyed the mike while Liam looked up through the windshield, trying to locate the other plane. “Alaska one-three-three, this is Cessna eight-two Victor November. I am twenty minutes out of Kagati Lake on a heading for Newenham. How may I assist you?”

“Eight-two Victor November, this is Alaska one-three-three, I have received a distress call from someone in Nenevok Creek. I repeat, I have intercepted a distress call from Nenevok Creek. The caller did not identify himself.”

“Alaska one-three-three, eight-two Victor November, did he identify the problem?”

“Eight-two Victor November, Alaska one-three-three, he said someone had been shot and that they need help now.”

Prince looked at Liam, who was already unfolding the map. She watched his forefinger locate Kagati Lake and trace a line south-southeast, until it stopped at Nenevok Creek.

He looked up. Her face was flushed, her eyes were bright and it looked as if her short dark hair was curling into even tighter curls. “Go,” he said.

She stood the plane on one wingtip and keyed the mike at the same time. “Alaska Airlines one-three-three, this is Alaska State Trooper Diana Prince on board eight-two Victor November. We’ll take it from here. Eight-two Victor November out.”