by Stan Jones
Active was breathing hard as he came out into the west wind prowling through the summer afternoon. The ice of Chukchi Bay had gone out while he was away and now the view to the west showed open water to the horizon. The fog that came in on a summer west wind hadn’t shown up yet today, resulting in an odd combination of cold air and hot sun. It felt good, cleared his head after the showdown with Palmer, as he climbed into the Trooper Suburban. Palmer would be far more convincing to a jury than his daughter would. It was even possible he was telling the truth. Maybe he acted innocent because he was.
What about the wife, Ida? Was there any point in dragging her through it? No matter what Grace had told her years ago, it was hearsay and Palmer’s line that his daughter was “sick then and she’s sick now” was impregnable without direct evidence from someone other than Grace Palmer. It was unlikely any DA would waste time and money on the case.
He started the Suburban and remembered he didn’t know where Palmer lived. So he had to radio Dispatch for directions.
Lucy Generous’s voice was formal and professional as she told him the Palmer house was on Beach Street and read him the number. He tried unsuccessfully to remember what part of Beach Street that would fall on, and keyed the microphone in frustration. “What’s it close to?”
“Its two doors from my Aana Pauline’s.” Even over the scratchy police channel, the chill in Lucy’s voice sounded a little deeper.
He thought of asking her out to dinner, something, anything, right there over the radio, but didn’t want to do it in semi-public. So he promised himself to stop at the dispatch booth when he got back to the Public Safety building, feeling vaguely guilty for having been too embarrassed to do it over the radio and for not having realized that Jason Palmer’s house was only two doors away from Lucy’s grandmother, Pauline Generous, where God knew, he had dropped Lucy off and picked her up often enough. And spread over it all like morning frost was a layer of irritation with himself for feeling guilty, and with Lucy Generous for being able to make him feel guilty over nothing.
He put the Trooper Suburban in gear, made his way to Beach Street and bounced north, the old vehicle producing what sounded like a new “clunk” from the right rear shock absorber whenever he hit a particularly deep pothole. He was momentarily depressed at the thought of having to find Billy Clarkson, the Alaska Airlines freight handler who contracted for the Trooper vehicle maintenance on the side. Then he remembered that Evelyn O’Brien was now in charge of dealing with Clarkson, whose lack of enterprise was exceeded only by his prices. Active smiled with pleasure at the thought of Evelyn chewing on Clarkson; he could hear her on the phone now: “What the hell are my Troopers supposed to drive for two weeks while you wait for your fucking parts?” That was what she always called them, her Troopers.
He passed Pauline’s place and there, two doors farther along, was the Palmer house. It was a two-story white clapboard on a lot that, he now saw, shared an alley with Chukchi High.
Palmer’s clapboard was old enough to date back to when new houses in Chukchi were built one board at a time, rather than being stapled together from plywood or barged in as factory-made modules, which was how Chukchi houses came into being nowadays. Despite its age, the Palmer house looked to be in good shape. Decent paint and no broken windows or dead snowmachines around the place where the young Grace Palmer had been so afraid of her father following her into the bathroom that she had been treated for constipation at the Chukchi Public Health Service Hospital.
For a long time, no one answered his knock. Then he heard tiny noises behind the door and finally it opened about six inches.
A girl—ten or so, he guessed, and vaguely familiar-looking— peered into the kunnichuk for a moment through big glasses, then said, “My aunt doesn’t want to talk to you. She say Uncle Jason already tell you everything she have to say.”
Active was left momentarily speechless by the fact that Ida Palmer already knew about his visit with Jason Palmer. Then he realized Jason must have called her while he, Active, was rattling up Beach Street in the Suburban.
As that was dawning on him, he realized what was familiar about the girl. Except for the glasses, she looked a little like the pictures of Grace Palmer at the same age. He puzzled for a moment over who she could be before remembering that she had called Ida Palmer “aunt.” Hadn’t Grace Palmer spoken of having a cousin in Isignaq? That would explain the resemblance. She must be the daughter of Ida Palmer’s sister who had crashed with Cowboy Decker. He thought of offering condolences, but wasn’t sure enough of his guess. Then she solved the problem for him.
“My mom was fatally killed,” she said.
“I heard that. I’m very sorry.”
“Is she in heaven now?”
“I’m sure she is. Will you tell your aunt I have a message from her daughter Grace?”
The girl turned and vanished down a hall. She had left the door ajar, so he stepped from the kunnichuk into the living room. Moose antlers, caribou antlers and a Dall sheep head with a full curl of horn occupied two walls, and a grizzly hide covered much of the floor . A blue-eyed, fair-skinned Jesus hung from another wall, along with pictures of the Palmer family. Several were copies of those Jason Palmer had given him at Chukchi High. Some showed a boy he took to be the son, Roy, with the latest one showing Roy on a military base in a countryside that looked Middle Eastern.
“You have a message from Gracie?” said a voice from behind him.
He turned to see a middle-aged Inupiat woman in the hall. Ida Palmer was dressed warmly, considering that it was summer. Wool slacks, a sweater, sealskin slippers. She looked a little thin, slightly hollow-eyed perhaps, but not close to death.
If her face showed her illness, it also showed something of where her daughter’s looks had come from. Though Grace Palmer’s eyes had come from her father, Active could now see Ida Palmer in Grace’s face, and Grace in Ida’s. It was easy to imagine the pretty Inupiat girl she must have been when Jason Palmer married her.
The niece hovered behind Ida, looking shy and uneasy.
“I need to speak with you in private.” He nodded at the girl. “Perhaps she could wait in another room.”
The woman turned to the girl, touched her shoulder. “Nita, maybe you could make us some tea. You want some, Mr. Active?”
He shook his head and said “No, thanks.” The girl disappeared down the hall again and Ida closed the door behind her. Distantly, he heard water running, a rattle of pots and crockery.
Ida Palmer moved to an arm-chair and lowered herself into it, slowly and with care. “I can’t stand up too long anymore. You could sit over there.” She motioned at a couch, pale green with large white flowers on it.
Active studied the woman across the room and tried to decide if he could deliver the message Grace Palmer had entrusted to him on the rainy hillside above Captain’s Bay.
If Ida Palmer still didn’t believe her daughter’s story about incest, then the message was undeliverable, or at least unreceivable. The stress might … but Ida Palmer was the last witness who could corroborate any part of Grace’s story.
“She asked me to tell you she doesn’t hold it against you, that you didn’t believe her when she told you what her father did to her.”
Ida Palmer’s face contracted in a look of pain that swiftly mutated into a stubborn, stony frown. “He’s a good man. He wouldn’t do that.”
“Grace says he got Jeanie pregnant before she died.”
“Then she will burn in hell, telling them old stories again. I hope now that I’m so sick, she’ll forget all that, come home so we can all be together again, be family once more, but I guess not.” Her cheeks were wet; she wiped them with a Kleenex from a pocket of the sweater.
The hallway door opened and Nita came in with a steaming mug of tea and set it on a lamp table beside Ida Palmer’s chair. “I put in lot of sugar, the way you like.”
The older woman nodded, then signaled with a jerk of her head that Nita should leave aga
in. She disappeared down the hall, the door clicking shut behind her.
“I was sorry to hear about the crash and your sister. Nita was her daughter?”
Ida Palmer nodded. “Seem like nothing but trouble for this family. Grace, Jeanie, now Aggie.” She shook her head and her cheeks were wet again; again the handkerchief.
“How’s Nita’s father taking it?”
Ida Palmer’s eyes were closed now, her head resting against the chair back. “She got no father, she’s an orphan now. My sister’s husband die on the river when Nita’s three.”
Active digested this in silence, Ida now humming something that sounded like a hymn, or a country song, from Kay-Chuck. “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” Was that what the announcer had called it?
“Where will she stay after the funeral?” he said.
“Oh, we’ll take her. She always like her Uncle Jason, and she can help him when I … while I’m sick.”
“And after you’re … if you don’t get well?”
“He’ll be real good father to her, I know he will.”
“Can I talk to her a little bit?”
The fragile head with its papery skin jerked up and the dark, pained eyes looked hard into his own.
“I don’t want you scaring her with them old stories of Grace’s, Mr. Active. You leave Nita alone. This family had enough trouble already because of that girl.” The head sank back again and the eyes closed. “You just leave us alone, Mr. Active. That’s what my family need right now.”
He rose to go, wondering if Jason Palmer had coached his wife on what to say, and laid one of his business cards on her lap. “I hope you’re right, Mrs. Palmer. But if anything … if you change your mind about anything, will you call me at the Trooper offices? Or you could call Grace in Dutch Harbor. I wrote the number on the back of my card.”
She opened her eyes, picked up the card, and tucked it into the pocket with the handkerchief. “I don’t think that will happen, Mr. Active. One of my daughters is dead, one is lost and crazy. I won’t let anything happen to Nita, not ever.” The tired black eyes flashed silver for a moment, reminding him of the lost and crazy daughter.
CHAPTER TWENTY
When Active called the office at Elizabeth Cove Seafoods, the woman who answered the phone told him, no, she would not pull Angie Ramos off the slimeline unless it was an emergency.
It wasn’t an emergency, not exactly? Then, no, she definitely would not pull Ms. Ramos off the slimeline but she would take a message. “Call Trooper Active in Chukchi? Very well. And she has the number? Very well, we’ll give her the message at her next break, no, wait, she’s off today, we’ll give it to her tomorrow.”
The story at the Triangle Bunkhouse was much the same, except it came from a man this time, not the Hispanic woman who had checked him in a few days earlier. “No, we won’t go find her, but we’ll take a message and leave it in her mail slot. No, we don’t know if she’s in or out, as long as she pays her rent, it’s no questions asked and none answered, heh-heh, heh-heh,” causing Active to feel simultaneously irritated and stupid as he gave his name and said he was calling from Chukchi and that Angie Ramos already had his number.
Then, feeling he had done all he could, he pushed the Palmer family into a mental drawer and closed it and walked down to the dispatch booth to invite Lucy Generous over for dinner, or out to dinner, her choice.
“What for?” she said. She was dressed for summer. Jeans, yellow short-sleeve T-shirt, long hair braided and coiled at the back of her head, white hooded sweatshirt draped over the back of her chair.
“Well, we both have to eat. I thought we might as well do it together.” He grinned, hoping this sounded like the joke it was intended to be, and waited for her reaction.
There wasn’t any, not even one of her “Hmmmphs!” So he pulled the little silver box from behind his back. “I got you this.”
She glanced at it, but didn’t take it when he held it out, so he set it on the counter of the dispatch window. “It’s from Nordstrom’s.”
“You’re gone a week and you barely call me?”
“I was pretty busy.”
She picked the box up, opened it, studied the bottle. “Looking for Grace Palmer?”
He watched, mesmerized, as she unscrewed the cap, tapped the little opening, touched the inside of her wrist and sniffed. He had to fight the impulse to close his eyes and inhale deeply as the scent of lavender reached him.
“It’s nice,” Lucy shrugged. She closed the bottle, put it back in the box, and closed that too. “Did you find her?”
“Can we talk about that at dinner?”
“I don’t want to talk about Grace Palmer.”
“OK, we won’t. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call you while I was gone. If I go back up to my office and call you, can we go out to dinner then?”
The tiniest hint of a grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I’ll use the 9-1-1 line. Because I missed lunch and if I don’t eat something soon it will be an emergency.” She grinned for real.
“OK, I’ll pick you up after work and we’ll go … would you rather go to my place or the Northern Dragon?” He waited in a fever of self-loathing, lust, anticipation, and dread for her answer, knowing where they’d end up if she came over to his place wearing lavender, feeling even worse, even lower than when he had bought the little bottle at Nordstrom’s or when he had given it to her moments ago.
She cut him a sidelong glance, then looked straight ahead, as if her console were the most interesting thing on the entire first floor of the Chukchi Public Safety Building. “You’re the hungry one. What do you want to do?”
“Maybe the Dragon,” he said after a long silence. He felt honorable, dishonest, and depressed, all at once, and decided he would accidentally break the bottle when he got the chance, hopefully before she put any more on.
Lucy sighed a little and said “OK.” She was quiet for a time and then, eyes still on her console, “How’d she look?”
He tried not to jump when he heard the question, the same question everyone who had ever known Grace Palmer seemed to ask when they learned she’d been found. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about her.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, maybe we need to.”
She was about to answer, he thought, when her console buzzed and a button lit up and she punched it and said “Chukchi Public Safety.”
He said, “See you after work,” and started to walk away, but she held up a finger and he heard her say, “He’s right here. Who’s calling, please?”
And he knew the answer before she looked at him, eyes level and cool, and said, “It’s Angie Ramos. Do you want to take it here?” She pointed at the phone on the dispatch counter, one line blinking.
“No, in my office,” he said, and starting up the stairs two at a time before he could think it through and force himself to go up at a more decorous pace.
Her voice was low and warm when he picked up his office phone and punched the blinking button, wondering briefly if Lucy was, could be, listening in from downstairs. “Hi, Nathan.”
“Hi. Thanks for calling back. How are you?”
“Pretty well, I guess. I had the day off. I went up on the hillside and smoked the last of those Marlboros you bought me.”
“I hope I didn’t re-implant any bad habits.”
She chuckled a little. “No, I didn’t buy any more.”
“That’s good,” he said, then found himself stalled. How to get into it? She solved the problem by speaking first.
“So. You called?”
He cleared his throat. “I talked to your parents today.”
“Parents plural? Both of them?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not about …”
“I …”
“Shit! Nathan, I said I don’t want to ever talk about that again. It has to stay in the compartment now.”
“I felt I had to.”
She sighed. “I told you, I’m not giving an
y statements, I’m not coming back, and I’m not testifying.”
“Well, there’s something —”
“No, I said!”
“But —”
“How’s Ida?”
“Not too bad,” he said. “She looks a little weak and fragile, moves carefully, but she does get around on her own. The house looks pretty well kept.”
“Uh-huh. I wish I had a Marlboro.”
“Uh-huh.” He heard a noise like someone walking past her— the pay phone at the Triangle was in the hall, as he remembered— then rustling and crackling sounds. Perhaps she was switching ears with the phone.
“What did she say about, about … ?”
“She still doesn’t believe you. She says you’ll burn in hell for telling those old stories again.” He tried to laugh, to turn it into a joke, then realized it was hopeless and cleared his throat, so loudly he startled himself.
“She’s in denial, Nathan.”
“Yeah.”
“And Jason?”
“Same thing, pretty much, except for the part about burning in hell.”
She didn’t say anything, but he could hear her breathing— gasping, really, as if fighting for control, trying not to cry. “Jason said they tried to get you into counseling but you wouldn’t go.”
“Fuck, no.” There was no tremor in her voice now, just anger. “There was only one mental health counselor in Chukchi back then and she worked at the school. Probably still does. Regina Watkins.”
“Uh-huh. Something about an unresolved Electra complex that progressed into erotomania?”
“Yeah, that’s Regina, all right. Fucking psychobabble.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I wonder if you believe me.”
It was clear she needed him to, so he said he did, without knowing if it was true. Over the phone, she wasn’t as persuasive.
“There’s something else,” he said into her silence.
“What?” Her voice was tight, alarmed.
“That’s what I was trying to say before. Your Aunt Agnes was killed in a plane crash a few days ago. A pilot named Cowboy Decker tried to take off in a twin-engine plane with only one engine working and they crashed.”