There was a long silence as everyone considered the situation in which they found themselves. It was obvious that no one relished the idea of rummaging around in Karen’s belongings.
“Okay,” said Aaron, at last, standing up, “I’ll help. But what are we going to do about—the dead man?”
“He’s okay where he is for the time being,” Don said. “We don’t want to bring him back here—do we?”
“It seems kind of wrong to leave him clear down at the other end of the island somehow, doesn’t it? We could put him in the carpenter shed,” Aaron suggested. He glanced around the room and frowned uneasily. “I’m sorry, but what we’re all thinking might as well be said. It looks like someone on this island hit him with something heavy—probably a rock. We don’t know who that someone was, do we? But whoever it is might just go back and shove him on out into the sound—get rid of him.”
There was a moment of awed, motionless silence as they all stared at him in astonishment.
Then Whitney, lips stiff with indignation, stepped forward and slapped a hand on the tabletop. “Hey now. What the hell makes you think one of
us
killed him? You’ve got no right to make that kind of assumption. It could just as well have been
you
as any of us. I won’t be . . .”
“Whoa, Whitney,” Jim broke in. “Aaron’s not accusing you—or anyone else directly.”
“The hell he’s not!”
“No, he’s not. Think about it. You may have slept soundly all night last night. But I’m sure some of us didn’t. I woke up enough to hear one person moving and, later, the voices of at least two people outside during the night.”
Jessie was tempted to tell him who those two had been, remembering finding Karen on the helipad and their conversation, but kept her own counsel and filed the information for later. Everyone in the room did not need to know everything. But it was interesting that someone besides Karen had also been up in the night—unless it was Karen going out that Jim had heard.
Jim continued. “We didn’t all sleep close together, you know. Aaron was alone on the roof. Curt slept in the basement. I have no idea if any of the rest of us were up, but someone could have been. The toilet was flushed twice. Did you hear it?”
Whitney shrugged and shook her head.
“I thought not. And you were sleeping closest to the bathroom. So let’s don’t any of us get crazy about this, okay? Let’s do what we can and let law enforcement take care of investigating when they get here.”
“I still think we should bring that guy back here to the carpenter shop,” Aaron said.
“I think so too,” Jim agreed. “We’ll do it after we search Karen’s stuff for the cell phones, or make a call from the boat if we have to. Come on, Aaron. Might as well get it over with. Laurie, will you and Jessie see if you can get Karen out of there? It would make it easier.”
Much against Karen’s wishes, they did—insisting that she come out on her own, or be carried out. It did not win them any confidence points with her, but she seemed to have managed to regain some self-control and dignity. She marched stoically out of the lighthouse and up onto the helipad, where she sat, as Jessie had found her the night before, facing west, with her legs hanging over the low rail, and refused to speak to anyone.
As soon as she had vacated the room, Jim and Aaron went in to make their search, while the rest waited in the common room. It was very quiet for a few minutes. Then Don stood up suddenly.
“Sandra must still be painting the roof. With those headphones on, she won’t have heard a thing, but she’s been up there a long time and I’d better go bring her down.”
He disappeared toward the stairs that went up from the second hallway and they heard his footsteps as he hurriedly climbed them.
Jim and Aaron came back shaking their heads at not having found either of the two missing cell phones among Karen’s possessions. What they did find made Jim not only glad, but also relieved that he had insisted on making the search. He came out—Aaron trailing behind with a worried expression—and called Laurie and Jessie back into the common room from where they had been keeping busy in the kitchen. Lifting the bottom of the blue Five Finger Lighthouse sweatshirt he was wearing, he removed a pistol from the waistband of his jeans and laid it down on the table without a word.
“Da-amn!”
said Curt, sitting up straight in his chair on the far side of the room. “That’s an interesting item. But no cell phones?”
“What would she have that for?” Whitney asked, eyes wide.
Jim shook his head. “I don’t know, but it’s loaded. You have any idea, Jessie?”
“No. I didn’t know she had it.” Curious, but she found that Karen’s having a gun came as no real surprise. Would anything Karen did astound her? She wondered apprehensively.
Shouldn’t take people for granted,
she told herself, and thought about calling Alex for advice before remembering that she now had no way of calling him at all.
Taking the revolver from the table, she noticed there were only four rounds left in the cylinder, and a quick sniff rewarded her with the acrid smell of cordite. This gun had been fired recently.
The heavy silence from those watching lasted for a long moment that was broken by the sound of Don’s steps on the stairs. He came frowning into the room as Jessie laid the gun down again without revealing what she had learned.
“Sandra’s not up there,” he told them. “Anybody know where she is?”
No one did.
“Where the hell’d that come from?” he demanded in concern, spotting the handgun on the table.
Jim told him.
“Damn!”
he said, spinning toward the kitchen door, obviously on his way to wring a few answers from Karen. “Well, I’m going to get some information.”
Jim caught him by the arm and swung him back.
“Hey, Don. Wait a minute and think about it. This thing was in Karen’s suitcase, not her hand. What could it have to do with Sandra? She probably finished on the roof and went off to the south end looking for the rest of us. We must have missed her on our way back.”
“How
could
we have missed her?”
“Pretty easily if she climbed the hill to look at the eagle’s nest, or went around the rocky east side. Nobody was saying much. We could have passed without her hearing. Let’s go around in the boat—make that call to the authorities on the way—and look for her before you start on Karen. If we don’t find her going over, we’ll make a careful search on the way back. We’ll find her. Okay? Where’s she gonna go on three acres anyway?”
“Okay,” Don agreed, after a moment’s hesitation. “We can collect that poor guy from the south end—get that over with at the same time.”
“Right.”
Jim took the handgun and, as they passed through the kitchen, raised the lid of a small freezer next to a closet and dropped it in. Then they all went out and down the stairs to the lower platform. Several glanced in the direction of the helipad, where Karen still sat, mutely staring west into Frederick Sound, but she didn’t even turn her head, ignoring them completely.
They walked across to the edge of the platform that overlooked the small cove protecting Jim’s powerboat.
Where
is
the boat?
Jessie wondered, looking down, for the sheltered space where she had last seen it tied up was empty.
Then Jim began to swear—long and concentrated curses that included words even the dog mushers she knew seldom incorporated into their vocabulary.
Peering carefully into the water, she was just able to make out the shape of the Seawolf—resting on the bottom of the small cove.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ALEX JENSEN WOKE EARLY ON WEDNESDAY MORNING AND rolled over sleepily in the big brass bed toward the east window that filled with sunshine—when there was sunshine. On this particular morning he could see that the light filtering in between the half-drawn curtains was pale gray, which, combined with the sound of water dripping from the roof outside, signaled a rainy day. He could also see that he was alone in the big brass bed high in the loft bedroom of Jessie Arnold’s new log house on Knik Road and remembered that she had gone off to work on the lighthouse.
In no hurry to leave the just-right morning warmth of the bed, he rolled onto his back, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared upward at the sloped ceiling, considering what he should do with this day off from his job with the Alaska State Troopers. Billy Steward, who helped Jessie care for her dogs, would be along soon. They had planned to spend the morning cleaning boxes for the few dogs left in the kennel but, not being a job for wet weather, that would only happen if the rain stopped. There were several errands to run and a pile of wood that needed splitting and stacking for winter fires in the potbellied stove downstairs. Soon, however, his mind wandered off to other things, specifically how familiar, yet different, it seemed to be back in Alaska in this new house. This replacement for Jessie’s cabin that had burned had been constructed in the old footprint—new and better, but a little strange in its dissimilarities, and he was still getting used to it.
His relationship with Jessie was different too. In the last month they had fallen quite easily into old, comfortable habits and patterns of living in the same space, sharing many activities, but leaving each other plenty of room when appropriate.
He smiled, recalling that Jessie’s assessment of personal space was usually
We’re not joined at the hip, after all.
But there were tentative spaces in their togetherness that he noticed and that had nothing to do with habits or patterns, but rather with the trust that had been a bit bruised in their separation. She would call tonight, he remembered, and their conversation could add another block of confidence to their togetherness. At least it pleased him to think so.
Now,
he decided, tossing back the covers and swinging his long legs out of bed, it was time to let the coffee mumble itself into the pot while he showered. Then he had some bacon and eggs planned for the empty spot under his ribs.
He kept himself busy all day. The rain stopped mid-morning, Billy showed up, and they worked together in the dog yard until close to noon. In the afternoon, though he wasn’t on duty, he stopped by his office to let his commander know how well the meeting in Whitehorse had gone and the cooperation they could expect from the RCMP. As he walked back to his pickup after their conversation, he thought how much it satisfied him to be back and working in Alaska, even with winter about to show up on the doorstep. Coming back had allowed him to realize that he actually felt more at home in the Far North than he did in Idaho, where he had been born and raised. It was another thing that pleased him.
From there he made another stop at the grocery store for general supplies he had not wanted to take the time to purchase the night before on his way home. Wandering through the aisles, he collected a cart full of items just because they appealed to him: crackers, cheese, smoked oysters, some apple-flavored sausage that he liked for breakfast, a couple of cans of stew—which he returned to the shelf upon deciding he could make a better stew of his own and picking up the meat and vegetables to do so. In the bakery section, he tossed in a loaf of his favorite sourdough bread that he had not been able to find during his time in Idaho, then went to the deli for some chopped green and black olives to mix with cream cheese. He went happily up and down the aisles and had almost a full cart when he finally decided he was ready to go through checkout. Slipping into the liquor store on his way out, he renewed Jessie’s flagging supply of Killian’s lager before pushing the cart with his purchases to the truck, through the rain that had started again, and setting out for home.
Home.
The sound of the word—the very taste of it—pleased him as well.
Back at home, he brought Tank into the house for company while he browned the beef and chopped vegetables for his stew, then set it to simmering on the back of the stove, planning a late dinner complete with the sourdough bread he would heat in the oven. He turned on the six o’clock news and settled with a cold Killian’s to watch it. Tank padded across to lie down with his muzzle companionably on one of Alex’s stockinged feet, closed his eyes in contentment when the man rubbed his ears, then raised his head so he could have his chin scratched as well.
“You
are
spoiled,” Alex told him. “You should be out breaking trail somewhere, not lying around here. But you can stay in until Jessie calls. Okay?”
By nine, when he had eaten dinner, cleaned up the kitchen, and watched a movie on HBO that he had seen before, she still hadn’t called.
Flipping through the channels, he found nothing that caught his interest, so he turned on some music instead and found a book he hadn’t read. By the end of the second chapter he realized that he had no idea which name belonged to which character, threw the book aside, turned off the music, and went to stand at the front window and stare out into the darkness that surrounded the house. A car went by on Knik Road, its headlights illuminating the pavement and making silhouettes of the trees at the end of the driveway.