Nothing Gold Can Stay

TWENTY-ONE

Newenham, September 6

“Do you think the wind’s slowing down a little?”

“In the last five minutes since you asked, no.”

“Wy’s going to be seriously pissed if you break her computer.”

Jim spared a glance over his shoulder. “Oh, please.”

Jo, pacing restlessly back and forth across the living room of Wy’s house, glared at the back of his head as he sat hunched over the monitor. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“Destroying your credit rating.”

She halted. “What?”

He grinned at the screen. “Relax, Dunaway, it was joke.”

Suspiciously, she came to peer over his shoulder. “It better be.” She squinted. “For god’s sake. Isn’t that the state troopers’ database?”

“Yes.”

“How did you get in?”

“Talent, Dunaway, loads and loads of talent.” He scrolled down.

“Liam gave you the password.”

He snorted. “The perfect cop breaking faith with his own force? Give me a break.”

“You hacked in?” Jo glanced around nervously, as if expecting the FBI to break down the front door in the next moment. “You can get arrested for that.”

“They’ll have to catch me first.” He turned and they practically bumped noses. For that single moment, time seemed to stop. She could feel his breath on her face. He could see every separate dark blond lash on her eyelids. For a frozen moment, neither of them moved. Bridget and Luke, playing a noisy game of cribbage at the kitchen counter, seemed to fade from the room.

She jerked back, eyes wide with dismay.

“Well, well,” he said, just as startled but quicker to recover.

“Well, well, nothing,” she said. She took what she hoped was an unobtrusive step backward. “I asked you what you were looking at.”

You, he thought. And now that I am, I won’t stop until I get you. But he was a patient man, and there was a time and a place for everything. Not here, not now. But somewhere and soon. “Disappearances,” he said, turning back to the computer.

“Disappearances?” She took a cautious step forward, positioning herself so that she could just barely read the text on the screen over his shoulder, but far enough away to run if she had to. Not that she would, she wasn’t a coward.

“Yeah.”

“What disappearances?”

“Women. Young women. Gone missing. All from the Bristol Bay area.” Unconsciously, she took another step forward, and he smiled to himself when he felt her warmth at his shoulder.

“You mean like Rebecca Hanover?”

“I mean exactly like Rebecca Hanover.” He sat back. The fuzz of her sweater brushed the back of his head. She didn’t notice. He did. “Last night at dinner you were talking about another woman who went missing.”

“Stella Silverthorne.”

“Yeah. Then Wy was talking about the daughter of the postmistress that got killed, what was her name…”

Jo’s reportorial instincts were kicking in, the mental Rolodex whirring, click, stop. “Ruby Nunapitchuk.”

“Yeah.”

“I remember that story. The dad took the kids out hunting, right? Two sons and two daughters?”

“Yeah, and lost one of the daughters.”

“They never found the body.”

“Nope.” He nodded at the screen. “Bill Billington ruled on a presumptive death hearing the following spring. Accidental death due to misadventure. The parents filed an appeal, which was denied.”

“What was the basis of their appeal?”

“You ever talk to a magistrate about presumptive death hearings?”

She shook her head.

“Nobody wants to believe in accidental death. It’s too-it’s too-”

“Accidental?” she suggested.

“Smart-ass,” he said, “but yeah. You lose somebody you love, you want there to be a reason. He can’t have fallen into a glacier, or off a boat, or down a mountain. Death can’t be that random, that irrational, not for a lot of people.”

“Makes sense.”

“Ha, ha. Sit down with Bill sometime, get her to tell you some of the arguments surviving family members have put forward to vacate a judgment of accidental death. They come in two kinds: weird, and weirder. He was pushed into that glacier, he was dumped off that boat, he was tripped down that mountain. He was about to take over the glacier tour company, and the current owner bumped him off. He seduced the boat captain’s daughter, and the captain keelhauled him. The climb leader had designs on his body, and when he wouldn’t put out, cut the rope between them.”

“Sounds like a story.” He shook his head in feigned exasperation at her single-mindedness. She grinned. Their eyes met. The grin faded. “Yes. Well. So you started looking up missing women.”

“Women missing in the Bristol Bay area,” he said. He tilted the chair back, coming solidly up against her, and linked his hands behind his head. She was still for a moment before moving back, but not that much back. His dark hair stood up in a rooster tail from repeated impatient pullings, and he was frowning behind his glasses. “It didn’t hit me until last night, when you were telling us the story about Finn Grant and his lost hunting party, and how one of the women was never found. Interesting, I thought, two women missing in the Bush, same general area, only four years apart. Then I remembered what Wy said about the postmistress’s daughter, and how she was lost eight years ago.”

Jo was skeptical but interested. “Okay, how many of these women missing in the Bristol Bay area have you found?”

He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees, frowning down at his clasped hands. “Seven. Altogether.”

“Seven?” Her tolerant smile and indulgent tone of voice vanished. One quick step had her back at his shoulder. “Show me.”

He was more troubled by his discovery than he was triumphant at having piqued her interest. “I accessed the missing persons records for the judicial district for the last twenty-five years, which is as far back as they’ve got in the data base. Ruby Nunapitchuk eight years ago, Stella Silverthorne five years ago, Rebecca Hanover four days ago.”

“All women.”

“All young women,” he said. “Rebecca Hanover is thirty-two. Ruby Nunapitchuk was seventeen. Stella Silverthorne was twenty-six.”

“Opal was fifty-six.”

“Yeah, she was the oldest by about twenty years.”

“She might not have looked her age, though,” Jo said slowly. “Wait a minute.” She rolled the chair back with him on it and pulled open the drawer. A pad of yellow sticky notes and a pen later, she shoved both back in.

“Just move me out of your way if I’m in it,” he said, ruffled.

She wasn’t listening, staring instead at the map on Wy’s wall. “Okay,” she said, scribbling. One sticky note with a name and a date went on the map at Nenevok Creek, another at Kagati Lake, a third at Weary River. “All right. Who else?”

“I worked backwards, most recent reported disappearances first. Cheryl Montgomery disappeared right off of Four Lake two years ago. She was an experienced backwoodsman, too, someone you wouldn’t think of getting lost.”

Jo inspected the face smiling up at her from the monitor. “She’s lovely.”

“Yeah. And lost.”

“Okay.” A fourth sticky note at Four Lake. “Who else?”

“In 1992, Brandi-with ani -Whitaker was mushing the Kuskokwim 500. She disappeared along with her whole team. Everybody figured they’d fallen into a lead. There wasn’t much fuss; she didn’t have much family and she wasn’t that good a musher.”

A fifth sticky note went up. “Next?”

“In 1991, Ruby Nunapitchuk. Then back four years, and Kristen Anderson goes missing. Fisherman’s wife, out of Koggiling. She was alone at fish camp. When her husband came to pick her up, she was gone. Salmon on the drying racks, but the fire had been cold for at least a day. Again, there is no hint of foul play in the case file. They had a good reputation in Koggiling. Three kids, sober, well liked.”

A sixth sticky note.

“And then as far back as I’ve been so far, 1986, Paulette Gustafson.”

“Same year as Whitaker?”

“Yeah.”

Then it hit her. “Gustafson?”

“Yeah?”

“As in former state senator Ted Gustafson?”

“Yeah.”

“Wy mentioned him. He’s on her mail route. The diabetic.”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe she stayed missing for long.”

“She still is, despite what looks like a full-scale search effort from everyone from the Alaska state troopers to the FBI.”

“The FBI?”

He shrugged. “There are references made to them; I haven’t tracked them down yet.”

“What was she doing here?”

“Visiting high school friends. She was a bit of a rounder, it sounds like. She and a group of her old high school buddies drove up to the One Lake campground, had from what all accounts say was one hell of a party, and when everybody woke up three days later to pack up and go home, Paulette Gustafson was missing.”

“They never found her.”

“Nope.”

A seventh sticky note. Jo stood back and stared at the map, festooned now with what she considered to be entirely too many little yellow flags. “Seven in, what, twelve years?”

“Thirteen. And this is only so far as we know, remember. Only what has made it into the trooper data bank.”

Behind them, Bridget toted up some impossible score and pegged out, and suffered Luke’s mock displeasure with a complacent air.

Jo took a deep, careful breath. “You mean-”

“I mean there might be more,” he said bluntly. “How many little villages out there who never call the troopers if they can possibly help it? How many kids drown in the river without anybody ever knowing, with their people chalking it up to Maniilaq or whatever malevolent spirit happens to be flitting through at that time of year? A lot of these folks haven’t made it into the twentieth century yet, Jo, never mind the twenty-first.”

She stared at the map, her skin cold. “Seven women, all young, all disappeared within sixty miles of one another, all within the space of thirteen years.” She looked at him. “How can no one have noticed?”

He shook his head. “None of them are related. Half of them are from Anchorage. Four, five of them were engaging in high-risk activities, hunting, canoeing, mushing. You’re a reporter, Jo, you’ve written enough stories about this kind of thing, you know it happens.”

She pointed, one at a time. “Paulette Gustafson, 1986. Same year, Kristen Anderson. A five-year gap between her and Ruby Nunapitchuk in 1991. A year after her, Brandi Whitaker. Two years after Brandi, Stella Silverthorne. Three years after Stella, Cheryl Montgomery.”

“And now, two years later, Rebecca Hanover.”

They stared at the map in silence for a moment. The shuffle of cards and the murmur of voices behind them seemed very far away.

She looked at him, her eyes glittering. “Seven times is a serial killer, Jim. We need to talk to Liam.”

He looked past her out the window. “Right about now, he should be busting up the party at Old Man Creek. If Wy managed to get them down without wrecking the plane.”

Jo didn’t even bristle. “Then let’s go see Prince.”

Old Man Creek, September 6

“Where’s Tim?” Wy shoved past Liam into the cabin. Tim was sitting at the table, across from Amelia, one hand full of cards, his mouth open as he stared up at Wy. She felt a sense of overwhelming relief sweep over her, a relaxation of a thrumming, all-consuming tension she didn’t even know she had been experiencing. She didn’t miss a step, she walked straight to him and pulled him up into her arms. “Oh, Tim,” she said, rocking him a little. “Oh, Tim.”

He squirmed in her embrace. “Mom, c’mon.” He slanted a sideways look at the girl across the table.

Liam’s eyes went to the woman lying in the bunk. “Who is that?” he said sharply.

She didn’t stir, but Bill snapped, “Keep your voice down.”

“Who is it?”

“We don’t know. She staggered in here about four hours ago and passed out.”

Liam nudged Wy. “Is that her?”

She tore her eyes from Tim and walked over to the bunk to look down into the woman’s face. “Yes. This is Rebecca Hanover.”

“Is that her name?” Bill said.

“Is she armed?” Liam said.

Moses surveyed him with an irritated expression. “ ‘Is she armed?’ She’s damn near dead, is what she is.”

“Her husband is dead. Murdered. Blasted away with a shotgun.”

They all looked at Rebecca Hanover. Her eyes moved restlessly beneath closed lids. Her skin was waxen, her hair tangled with twigs and pine needles. She whimpered a little, stirred, one hand half raised in a protective gesture. They could see the broken nails, the dried blood and dirt beneath them. One shoulder was bandaged. She subsided again into an uneasy sleep.

“Sanctuary,” Tim said.

Everyone turned to look at him. He flushed. “That’s what she said. It’s the only thing she said after we got her into the bed. ‘Sanctuary.’ ”

“What’s that mean?” Amelia said.

“In olden times,” Tim said, “people who were being chased could run into a church and the cops couldn’t get them. Sanctuary. I read about it in a book once,” he added.

“Oh.” Amelia had never read anything that hadn’t been assigned as homework. “Could bad guys run into the church, too?”

Tim looked at Bill. “Yes,” she said. “Bad guys could run into the church, too.”

Amelia looked at Rebecca Hanover, and with the devastating single-mindedness of the young said, “So just because they ask for sanctuary doesn’t mean they didn’t do it.”

Liam started forward, hand out to wake Rebecca Hanover. Moses got in his way. “I’ve got to talk to her, Moses,” Liam said.

“No you don’t,” Moses said. “She didn’t kill anybody.”

The voices tell you so? Liam wanted to say. “At the very least,” he said, “she’s a material witness to the death of her husband. I have to talk to her. Let me wake her up.”

“She’ll wake up in her own good time,” Moses said flatly. “And no,” he said pointedly, “they didn’t. They haven’t been real mouthy on this trip.”

Liam cleared his throat and couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Standoff.

“No one is going anywhere in this pea soup anyway,” Bill said practically, defusing the tension. “You’ll have plenty of time to wait for her to wake up. She’s not going anywhere. Amelia, make some more coffee. Tim, get down two more mugs. Are you hungry? How about a tuna fish sandwich? I’ll just-”

“What’s that?” Wy turned her head, listening.

“What?” Bill moved forward a step, and cursed the apprehensive note in her voice. She was nervous. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been nervous. She couldn’t have said why she was now.

Into it floated a voice, high, thin, thready. “Elaine. Elaine the fair. Elaine the lovable. Elaine, the lily maid. Come out, Elaine. Come out.”

On the bed, Rebecca whimpered without waking, her legs pumping against the blankets.

“What the hell?” Moses said, and went to the door.

“No, wait-” Liam said.

But Moses was before him and pulled the door open. “There’s no one named Elaine in here, but come on in and get out of the snow!”

The door pushed open against him and a man stood there.

“Gun!” Liam shouted, and Moses dropped into form one second too late. The weapon fired, the noise of the shot deafening everyone in the cabin, and Moses, foot half raised in something Liam recognized as the beginning of Kick Horizontally, crumpled to the floor without a sound.

Bill made a sound low in her throat and moved forward.

“Hold it,” the man said.

She either ignored him or didn’t hear him, dropping to her knees next to the old man, who suddenly looked infinitely older, whose blood welled red from beneath the fingers pressed to his side.

The man had a brown, seamed face surrounded by a halo of tangled, dirty gray hair, hair repeated in the collar of his shirt and on the backs of the hands gripping the rifle. A Browning, Liam noted. A semi-automatic,.270 maybe, or a.30-06. What did one of those hold, four rounds? Three, in magnum. He looked Moses, at his wound. Not magnum. Three left, then.

“Uuiliriq,” Tim breathed. “It’s the Hairy Man, Mom.”

Amelia’s eyes were enormous in her small face.

Mad eyes looked at Liam, saw the weapon strapped to his side and raised his rifle. “Lose the gun, son.” The words sounded rusty with disuse.

Liam didn’t move.

With uncanny instinct, the man took two steps forward and jammed the barrel of the rifle beneath Wy’s chin. She rose swiftly to her feet, to stand on tiptoe. Her eyes were wide but she looked more angry than frightened. His Wy. His own Wy, nobody else’s. Liam felt an answering anger kindle inside him.

The smell of the man filled the cabin, woodsmoke, dead fish, dried blood, sweat. Later, Liam would think it was that smell more than anything that made him pull out his weapon and lay it on the floor.

“Kick it to me,” the man said.

Liam managed to put enough of a spin on the kick that it slid to the opposite corner of the cabin, coming to rest beneath the bunk where Rebecca Hanover lay, motionless now, even her eyes still beneath their lids.

The man followed the path of the pistol with steady steps, and paused next to the bed. “Elaine.” His voice was low but audible to them all. “Oh, my Elaine. Why did you do this to yourself?”

He reached out a hand as if to brush the hair from her face, and she exploded into action, launching herself at him too quickly for him to raise the weapon. They both went crashing to the floor.

Liam went for the rifle, but the ragged man threw off Rebecca, who thudded hard into the wall, slid down and lay still. The ragged man got to the rifle a split second before Liam, but didn’t have time to aim before the rifle fired a second time. The shot boomed in the close confines of the room. Behind him Liam heard someone cry out, a soft thud as a body hit the floor. A second later, like Moses a second too late, he tackled the man and grabbed for the rifle, his hands closing around the barrel, warm from the two shots.

The ragged man was incredibly strong. They were close enough to touch, to kiss if they’d wanted to. The ragged man’s mouth was open in a rictus of a grin. He shifted his weight suddenly. Liam lost his balance and fell heavily to one side, maintaining through sheer will his grip on the rifle barrel. The ragged man snarled and the barrel inched down and there was nothing Liam could do to stop it. The rifle fired again, almost jolting his grip loose. His hands stung but he held on. One shot left.

Wy had been going for Moses’.30-06, mounted on a rack next to the door. The third shot had caught the.30-06 squarely on the breech, shattering it.

Wy cursed and hefted the rifle by the barrel in a strong batter’s grip. If it couldn’t shoot, it could club.

The ragged man twisted like a fish, dropping the rifle in a sudden movement and closing his hands around Liam’s throat. In an instinctive gesture, Liam dropped the barrel to grab for the ragged man’s wrists. The rifle was held between them by the press of their bodies, so tightly that it couldn’t fall. Liam was choking, his face a dull red, his hands clawing.

“Leave him go!” Wy shouted, and made good on her words when she swung the rifle. The butt connected with the ragged man’s skull with a satisfyingly solid smack.

His hands loosened from around Liam’s throat. He rolled to one side to lie on his back on the floor and blink up at the ceiling in a puzzled way.

Wy reached him first, kicking his rifle out of reach. “You son of a bitch!” she said fiercely.

He ignored her, turning his head to look at Rebecca Hanover sprawled in an ungainly heap, only just beginning to blink her way back into consciousness. “Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable,” he said dreamily. “Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat. My own Elaine.”

Behind them, Moses had crawled to Amelia and was cradling her in his arms. Tim knelt at his side, his face white and shocked. Blood had gathered and pooled on the floor beneath all three of them, but it had ceased now to flow.

“Goddamn it,” Moses said, in a tired voice Bill had never heard before. “Goddamn it all to hell.”

He put back his head and yelled, “You have to be right, don’t you, you sons a bitches! You just have to be right!”

Bill put her hands on his shoulders. “Hush, old man,” she said. “Hush now.”

“Goddamn it,” he said again.

He closed his eyes and rested his head on Bill’s breast.