Elements of Kill

by Christopher Lane

“We’re trying to figure out who he is, when he died, how he got in the pipe, that sort of thing.”

  Ford nodded, fingers ripping licks a half inch above the strings.

  “Are you and your partner responsible for checking pipe when it comes into camp?”

  Another nod. “Us or the other roustabouts. There’s probably … a dozen in camp this winter.” His right hand was busy now, pick plucking at the deactivated instrument. The resulting notes were weak and thin, like something from a child’s toy ukulele.

  “Did you check the pipes that were trucked up to seventeen yesterday?”

  “Yep.” His fingers froze on the fingerboard and he squinted at them. “Who are you guys?”

  “Officer Attla, Barrow PD,” Ray told him.

  “Barrow?”

  “And Deputy Cleaver, Deadhorse Sheriff’s Office.”

  This seemed to placate him. “Yeah. We inspected that load of casing yesterday afternoon.”

  “What time? Do you remember?”

  Ford shrugged. “Oh … maybe four or so.”

  “Do you know how long it was after that, before the casing was trucked up?”

  “Not exactly. Probably about an hour or two.”

  “Between five and six?”

  “Yeah. About then. They wanted it up there early, I know that much.”

  “Any idea why?”

  He shrugged again. “There were gonna start setting around midnight. Guess they were running low on casing and didn’t want to chance running out in the middle of the job. That can really screw up a hole.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Ray said. He tried to think of another question to ask but couldn’t. “We need to speak to your partner too,” he finally submitted, rather apologetically. Actually, he wasn’t sorry so much as reluctant. He remembered what it had been like to wake up Sam back at the rig.

  Ford glanced at his watch. “Time for him to get up anyway. He sleeps till the last possible second, gets up right before shift, doesn’t even take a shower, just pulls on his coveralls, grabs a half dozen donuts, and heads for the yard. The bum.” He returned to his practice, jamming enthusiastically without the benefit of electronic amplification.

  Ray waited, expecting Ford to assume the role of human alarm clock. After a few stanzas, Ford noticed this and said, “Go ahead, wake him up.”

  Ray looked at the lump, then at Billy Bob. The deputy stared back with wide eyes. “You heard ‘em. Wake him up, Ray.”

  After shooting fire at the cowboy with his eyes, Ray begrudgingly approached the lump. “Frank?” When that didn’t so much as disturb the snore pattern, he tried again. “Frank?”

  “He can’t hear you with those earplugs,” Ford offered, still jamming. He was rocking now, his entire body involved in the process of making music.

  Great. Placing a hand on what he assumed was a shoulder, he rocked the lump gently. It began to move, limbs repositioning themselves beneath the blanket. Another easy shake produced a head. It twisted until bleary eyes looked up at him.

  “Frank?”

  The response took the form of a coughing fit. “What time is it?” he whispered. Before Ray could answer, McMillian lifted his arm and brought his watch to his face. He squinted at it. “Go away. I got another ten minutes.”

  “Frank?” Ray shook him again.

  McMillian coughed again, his entire body shaking, and slowly sat up in bed. After removing his earplugs, he looked at them with a pathetic expression. “What is it?” he wheezed.

  “These guys are cops, Frank,” Ford told him, attention still focused on his instrument. “They found a dead body in a piece of casing. One of the pieces that got sent up to seventeen.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “So they want to know if we saw anything—when we did the walk-through inspection.”

  McMillian snorted, attempting to unclog his sinuses. “I didn’t see nuthin’.” The words came out raspy, a smoker’s voice.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary?” Ray tried.

  “Nuthin’.” He yawned, revealing a mouth of yellow teeth. After scratching at his long, matted blond hair, he added, “Just empty pipe.”

  “Could someone have put a body inside one of the pipes after you inspected it?”

  “Suppose so. If they wanted to.” McMillian didn’t seem interested, much less surprised at the suggestion of murder.

  “Could someone have managed that, hidin’ a body, I mean, without being seen?” Billy Bob drawled.

  “Probably.” McMillian began coughing again, serious convulsions this time. When it finally passed, he swore and reached for a pack of cigarettes. Lighting up, he leaned back against the wall, sucking in the antidote to his worries. His face grew calm. He looked relieved, content.

  “If the body was placed there after you inspected the casing,” Ray clarified, “but before it was trucked out, when would that have been?”

  McMillian inhaled nicotine, held it, exhaled bluish smoke. “Six?”

  Across the room, Ford was nodding, plinking madly.

  “What about the truck driver?” Billy Bob asked.

  It was a good question, something Ray should have thought of. “Yeah. Is he around? Can we talk to him?”

  McMillian wheezed, as if his lungs were about to be expelled from his chest, then answered through a fresh plume of smoke. “No idea.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  He considered this, sucking slowly, blowing out thoughtfully, like the stack on an idling train engine. “Think it might have been … either Burt or Mike.”

  “Burt,” Ford confirmed. He ran a blues scale, bent a note into another time zone, before adding, “Burt Singletary. He drove the seventeen load.”

  “Is he here? Could we talk to him?”

  Ford shook his head. “You’ll have to check. But I think he went to twelve after seventeen. That was about the time that Red, Mr. Bauer, shut everything down. It was iffy taking the pipe up last night. Coming home, without a load … Burt’s a good driver, but I doubt even he could keep his rig on the road in this storm.”

  “We’ll ask Reynolds,” Ray told Billy Bob.

  McMillian took a final suck on his cancer stick, then lit another from the waning butt. “If that’s all, fellas, I need to get up and get going.” He pushed back the covers and stood up. Ray unconsciously took a step backward. McMillian was wearing only a tank top and a pair of briefs. The skin of his legs was pale, almost powder white, between and around an impressive array of tattoos: snakes, dragons, a demon with a sword …

  “Like ‘em?” he asked with a grin.

  “Nice,” Ray answered. The man looked diseased, overgrown, as if a jungle fungus had attacked him in his sleep. “Thanks for your help.”

  As they started for the door, McMillian pulled a wrinkled sweatshirt over his oily hair. Ford thumbed a button on his amp and it erupted in a fuzzy, sustained power chord. They could hear him doing a number on the traditional blues, the notes a flurry of grinding and hissing, most of the way down the hall.

  “‘Travis Walk’,” Billy Bob noted appreciatively.

  “Uh-huh,” Ray grunted.

  “Ready to find them beds?”

  “More than ready. Why don’t you ask Reynolds where we’re bunking. And have him check on the truck driver.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “See about my snow machine.”

  They parted ways at the bottom of the stairwell, Billy Bob turning toward the office suites, Ray heading for the mudroom. When he had encased himself in Gor-tex, down, neoprene and rubber, Ray exited the camp building and reentered the arctic winter: perpetual night, cruel cold, relentless wind.

  The womb of the ancients, Grandfather called it. Ray could hear the old man repeating the phrase in Inupiat, his hoarse voice laden with awe and reverence. Grandfather, like the elders before him, held a deep respect for this seemingly adversarial, merciless environment. To him it was not a wicked foe but a life giver, the sustainer and nurturer of the People. The Land
and its harsh, stormy moods was their caring Mother.

  As Ray made his way toward the shed, his tired mind tried to make sense of that sentiment. He had always found it difficult to maintain a favorable attitude about a place so unforgiving. He couldn’t help but wonder why the Inupiat had willingly remained here, why they had remained faithful to such an angry “Mother.” Why had the Tareumiut, the Inupiat tribes of the northern seacoast, made the upper reaches of the Arctic Circle their home? Were they fools? Did they have a death wish? Or were they, as the legend claimed, blessed with wisdom that others failed to grasp? Had they somehow learned to live in harmony with one of the harshest, most brutal ecosystems on the globe?

  Over the years, Grandfather had related countless stories about their connection to the Land, their adaptation to its whims and desires. He had taught Ray to honor and accept the Arctic rhythms, to appease the fickle gods, to accept and endure the love-hate relationship that forever bound them to the territory that now bore the label Alaska. It made sense, in an odd sort of way. No matter the climate or the severity of the seasons, the Land did provide for those willing to seek out its peculiar forms of sustenance.

  Ray understood that. Yet at the age of 28, he was still struggling with one question: Why was he here? Why had he decided to remain in this godforsaken place, where winter was a lifestyle rather than a season, survival the chief occupation of daily routine? He could have left—still could. With his education and experience, he could land a job in Anchorage or Seattle. Why stay? Why put up with this abuse year after year?

  He stared past the halogen lanterns, into the looming darkness beyond, half-expecting an answer to materialize, like a spirit riding the storm.

  Completing the journey to the shed, he reached for the door handle and froze. He knew the reason he was there and had known it all along. Somehow, he simply couldn’t admit it to himself. The answer was part of him. As much as he sometimes resented it or wanted to change it, Ray was one of the People. Despite his sophisticated ways, his adoption of modern devices and technology, even his disbelief of and impatience with the backward traditions of the elders, he was nevertheless an Eskimo and always would be. That sense of identity would not allow him to depart. He felt inexplicably tied to his home, to his people’s home. Whether that umbilical cord was emotional, spiritual, wholly imaginary, he didn’t know. But of one thing he was certain. Abandoning the Land would mean disowning himself. To leave it would be to die.

  Pulling open the door, he hurried inside, away from the moaning night, away from the terrible reality that his destiny had been preordained, his future foretold long before his life had ever begun.

  SIXTEEN

  “TRY IT AGAIN.”

  The man straddling the Polaris nodded and jiggled the ignition. The machine roared to life and the rider twisted the throttle, causing the engine to rev enthusiastically.

  When it shuddered, issuing a cloud of blue smoke, the first man peered under the miniature hood, reached in and made an adjustment with a socket wrench. The Polaris purred smoothly in response. He listened for another moment, then gestured across his throat with a finger. A second later the machine was silent again.

  “Sounds good,” Ray offered.

  The two men glanced up at him warily, as if he had intruded upon an intimate moment. They were both wearing blue RefrigiWear suits, both rather small in stature. Hunched over the snow machine, they reminded Ray of elves repairing a toy.

  “This your machine?” the man with the wrench asked.

  Ray nodded. “Is she gonna live?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He stood up and stretched, setting the wrench on a red tool cart that had been wheeled into the shed.

  “Nice machine,” the other man said, still astride the seat. He gripped the handlebars and pretended to drive it. “Bet this baby can move.”

  “Yeah.” Ray pushed back his hood and began removing his goggles and mask.

  “I got two Suzukis back in Anchorage.” He made a face. “Pieces of junk. Took one of ‘em up the Susitna last winter. Thing croaked before I got to Kashwitna. Had to totally rebuild the engine. Cost almost as much as I paid for the thing.” He swore at this. “I’m saving up for a new one. Either an Arctic Cat or a Polaris. Heavy on the horses.”

  “Was it the carburetor?” Ray asked.

  “Huh-uh,” the other man grunted, shaking his head. He started to say something else, then gawked at Ray. The guy was probably 5 foot 7 or so, a good half a foot shorter than Ray.

  “You a Native?” he finally asked, as if that couldn’t possibly be the case. Ray nodded. “Inupiat.”

  “Man!” the mechanic on the Polaris exclaimed. “I ain’t never seen one so big.”

  “Me either!”

  Ray tried to think of a polite or at least humorous comeback but couldn’t. He was tired, his creativity and wit having forsaken him, and he had to fight the urge to shoot back with bullets: And I’ve never seen a naluaqmiu so stupid. Instead, he said, “So the carburetor I put on was okay?”

  With that, then the two men returned their attention to the snow machine. “Yeah,” the one standing said. “Ran a little rough till we adjusted it, but the part was fine.”

  “Hmm … It wouldn’t turn for me,” Ray told them. “Didn’t get anything.”

  Both mechanics shrugged at this. “Probably a fluke,” Shorty offered.

  “Yeah, a fluke,” the man on the Polaris agreed.

  “We charged your engine warmer too.”

  “Did it hold it?” Ray asked.

  “Uh-huh. Got to watch those lithium batteries, though.”

  “Yeah. They’re supposed to be ultra cold-weather, but …” Rising from the seat, he cursed the manufacturer.

  “It’s brand new,” Ray explained. “Guaranteed for five seasons.”

  “I don’t trust em, no matter what they say,” Shorty grumbled.

  “Me either. My motto is always carry a backup everything. Especially batteries. ‘Cause when they die, they do it in a heartbeat.”

  Shorty took a step back and invited Ray to inspect the machine. “She’s ready for you.”

  Ray gave it a cursory once over. The mechanics had not only repaired the engine, but cleaned it as well. The pieces gleamed at him in the fluorescent light.

  “Thanks guys. I appreciate it.”

  “And we gassed her up,” Shorty added.

  “I went ahead and put in Supreme,” the other said, pulling up his hood. “My Snow Cats have seizures on plain old unleaded.”

  “Thanks.”

  When their mittens were in place, the two men rolled the tool cart to the door, swung it open, and lifted the cart through.

  Closing the door behind them, Ray returned to the sled and began rummaging through the contents. He still had his shovels, and his tools were safely stowed in their plastic chest. The tent was there, and the sleeping bag, their cardboard box split and ailing. As he tossed it aside, he realized that the insulated pad was missing. It had apparently blown out. So had one of the extra tarps. The survival kit was intact: propane stove, matches, white gas. Two stubby snowshoes protruded from beneath one of the crates, and most of the spare snow machine parts seemed to be present.

  Removing the black box that held the radio, he set it by the door. It was battery driven and more than a few hours at this temperature would effectively kill it. He had slipped on his gear and was about to leave when he remembered the engine warmer. Toggling the power knob, he watched as the needle on the meter jumped to 100 percent. Fully charged. He plugged the device into the engine block, covered the sled, and flipped off the overhead light. Lifting the radio, he started for the camp.

  Billy Bob was waiting for him in the mudroom.

  “How’s your machine?”

  “A couple of mechanics got it up and running,” Ray replied. He set the radio down and slipped off his parka. After stuffing his mittens, goggles and mask into the pockets, he hung it in the closet.

  “Oh, they got ahold of the pilot.”


  “And?…”

  “He don’t ‘member if Weinhart was on the plane or not.”

  “Great.” Ray tossed his boots in and slammed the closet door in frustration. He sank to the bench and began putting the polar-fleece slippers on.

  “But he checked the passenger role and had the flight attendant make a count. It matched. There were twelve people on board, just like the list said.”

  “Flight attendant?”

  Billy Bob nodded at this.

  “Anybody talk to her?”

  The deputy shrugged. “I don’t know. Want me to go find out?” The look on his face made it plain that he was hoping the answer would be negative.

  Ray eyed his watch. 3:07. “No. Let’s get some sleep. At least a couple of hours. Then we’ll get some dinner, talk strategy, decide where to go from here.”

  “Okay.” Billy Bob was visibly relieved.

  “Did you get us a room?”

  “Yep. We’re right down the hall here.” He led Ray away from the offices, cafeteria, and fitness complex, into a short cul-de-sac of doors.

  “These here are for VIPs,” Billy Bob announced, bunny teeth gleaming. He was obviously pleased with the accommodations he had procured. Producing a key, he unlocked a door marked C.

  “Gosh!” Billy Bob exclaimed.

  “Gosh is right,” Ray muttered. The room was less like a dorm, more like a hotel suite. There were two queen-sized beds, a small efficiency kitchen, a bathroom, and a sitting area with an attractive table bearing a beautiful arrangement of artificial flowers. The walls were adorned with attractive paintings, all oil field related, and the entire room, bedspreads, wallpaper, carpet, was color coordinated in subdued earth tones.

  Billy Bob yanked on the handle of the miniature refrigerator. It was stocked with tiny bottles of booze, long-neck beer, fruit, chocolate. “Wall, I dee-clare!”

  Ray glanced at it, nodded, then turned his attention to the big-screen TV system. It was state-of-the-art: flat panel screen, the control unit equipped with a built-in VCR. Four small Bose speakers were poised near the ceiling at the four corners of the bedroom, creating surround sound.

  “Wanna beer?” Billy Bob asked.