by Неизвестный
She got lost and had to ask for directions before she found the tannery on Placer Street. The parking lot in front of the building had been poorly plowed and there wasn’t enough room for the Subaru between the two trucks already parked there. Kris drove down to a body shop and pulled into a corner of its lot and walked back along the road to the factory.
The lobby was deserted. A couple of chairs sat on a carpet spotted with coffee stains and cigarette burns. The walls were flimsy wood paneling that had buckled and warped. A dusty bear pelt sagged on one wall and in the corner were some black and white photographs of men with rifles standing behind dead animals. Behind an empty glass counter was a door; Kris pushed through it into a room lined with barrels of chemicals stacked against the walls, each with a black skull and cross bones stamped on its label. At the opposite end was another door, which opened into a concrete floored room filled with large vats and silent machinery. A sharp, chemical tang spiked the air. Kris unzipped her parka and walked into the room. The first vat she peered into was empty; dust and a crumpled cigarette pack lay at the bottom.
“Damn.”
Kris turned, searching the room for the owner of the voice. Something clinked and then there was a sound of scraping metal. She followed the sound through the machinery until she found a man in a faded Carhartt jacket, on his knees leaning into the base of a machine. A bulb hung from a hook over his head. Tools and greasy machine parts were clumped in different piles to one side of him.
“I’m looking for the manager,” Kris said.
The man grunted and withdrew his head from the cowling.
“Who the hell are you?” He was bald and wore glasses, which he pushed up his nose with the back of his hand.
“Kris Gabriel. A friend of mine used to work here.”
He got off his knees and rose heavily to his feet, looking at her suspiciously. His shirt had been pulled out of his pants and she could see the skin of his stomach sagging over his belt. A socket wrench hung from a hand. “Who’s that?”
“Ben Stewart.”
The man pulled a rag out of his pocket and wiped his hands slowly. “I know old Ben.”
“He and my mother were partners for a while.”
“Gabriel,” he said. “I thought it sounded familiar.” His face eased up. “If you’re looking for him, I don’t know where he’s at.” He hitched up his pants, and got awkwardly back down on his knees. “I’ve got skins coming in here in a week and I’m not ready for them yet.” He poked his head back into the opening. His arms tightened and Kris heard him grunt and whatever it was he was unscrewing, gave and his arm worked rapidly. Something clanked inside and a second later he brought his hand out and dropped a bolt into a tin can. The hand groped on the floor until it found the rag, then disappeared back inside with it.
Kris raised her voice. “Ben worked here, right?”
“Yeah,” he answered, his voice muffled. “He hated it, but he was a good worker.”
“Hated it?”
The man withdrew his head and looked at her. “Nobody who spends forty-fifty years in the bush willingly works for someone else.”
“How long did he work for you?”
“Three years, thereabouts.” He stuck his head back in the cowling.
“Did he sell you any furs the winter after he quit?” Why else would Ben have been up at his cabin?
“Ben couldn’t trap anymore; he was like seventy. He had trouble getting through the day here. And to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sorry when he gave his notice. I’m not running a nursing home for old trappers.”
“He gave you notice after his boy disappeared?”
“What’s that?”
“I said did he quit because his boy disappeared?”
“Who disappeared?” He pulled his head out and looked at her, wrinkling his nose to work his glasses higher.
“Corvus, his son. They woke up one day and he was gone.”
“I don’t remember that.” His brow furrowed, but he was frowning from confusion, not because he was trying to remember.
“That had to be why he quit. Things fell apart for him after that.”
“He never told me anything about it.”
“What’d he say when he quit, then?”
He looked back in the cowling. “I don’t remember. Something about something, I guess.” He leaned in again with the wrench.
“So he gave you what, a week’s notice?”
“Nope. He gave me plenty of notice. In fact, he trained the man who came in after him.”
“But he didn’t work past November.” Ben hadn’t signed his Bonus stub in December, so he had to have left by then.
“I don’t remember. I think he left about this time a couple of years ago. Before Thanksgiving anyway.”
“So when did he give you notice, then?” Kris said sharply. Ben couldn’t have given notice before Corvus disappeared.
“What is this? The Inquisition?”
“Just tell me when he told you he was quitting.”
He jerked his head out. “Back off, sister. I don’t owe you nothing.”
Kris glared at him, then dropped her eyes.
“Corvus was my brother,” she said by way of an apology.
“I don’t give a damn. I don’t answer to assholes.” He picked up a Phillips head and went back to work.
He worked quickly. Tools disappeared into the cowling and parts came out. Each was set off to the side in an organized line. Bolts and nuts were dropped into the can beside a pile of cracked wiring. Every once in a while he would glance out to see if she was still there.
Eventually he said. “As near as I can remember he gave me notice at the end of September or the beginning of October.”
“You’re sure?” Corvus had disappeared on the night of November third.
“Yeah. I hired Hank toward the end of October and that gave Ben two or three weeks to break him in.”
Kris was silent again, turning this over in her mind. It didn’t make sense.
“Do you know Ezekiel Damon?”
“Uh huh. I bought skins from him too. He trapped off the John east of Ben. But then, three or four years back, he quit showing up. I figured he started selling out of state. You can get better prices Outside. Tanneries there have lower overheard, but a lot of the trappers, especially Natives, don’t like dealing with people they can’t see. That’s the only thing that keeps me alive.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“Not a clue.” He pulled his head out, reached around for a cardboard box, and pulled out a part with wires sticking out of it. It was new, the matted steel clear and unblemished. He turned it over in his hand, examining it, before reaching back in with his socket wrench.
“If I wanted to find an old trapper in this town, were would I go?”
“Willy’s.”
“What’s that?”
“Bar, off Cushman a ways.”
“Is that all it’s called? Just Willy’s?”
“That’s all anybody I know’s ever called it. Ask for Jake Ash.”
The sun had set when she got back in the Subaru, but the light was still a dusty gray. It was probably between one and two p.m.. She ripped the bag of chips open with her teeth while she drove back up Cushman. She followed the tanner’s directions and found Willy’s stuck between a tire store and a machine shop. She parked in front and pushed her way through the door, unzipping her parka as she entered. Miller clock, moose rack, dead TV, a pool table, a few tables and chairs; she’d never been here before, but she’d been in a lot of bars like it. It was empty; not even anyone behind the bar. She lifted herself on top of one of the stools and looked through a line of whiskey bottles at her face reflected in the mirror wall behind them.
A door at the back of the room opened and a scrawny man came out holding a pad and pencil.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was doing my ordering. What can I get you?” he asked, walking behind the bar and pushing up his sleeves.
“I�
�m looking for Jake Ash. I was told I could find him here.”
“He does his drinking here. But not till after eight or nine.”
Kris glanced up at the Miller clock. A little after two.
“How about Ezekiel Damon? Does he come by?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Thanks. I’ll be back around eight.”
Kris zipped up the parka outside the bar, zipping in cold air. She flinched at its bite but left her hood down and lit a cigarette, smoking it squeezed between her lips, her hands balled in her pockets. This was the Fairbanks she remembered. Gray twilight trapping the city’s lights, dirty snow pushed against the sides of buildings, roads cracked and warped, cars and trucks pounding up and down them, banging into the potholes and over black bumps of ice, spewing huge clouds of exhaust that hung in the air until another vehicle plowed through them shredding them into cold, visible whirls.
No one turned to look at her.
__________
“No. I’m working.”
“I’ll come up then.”
The line was quiet.
“OK,” Justin said without enthusiasm. “Let me see if the conference room is available.”
The State’s hold music jangled in Barrett’s ear. A minute later, Justin came back on and said, flatly, “It’s free.”
“I’m on my way.” Barrett hung up. He stuck a notebook into his blazer pocket and grabbed his raincoat and hat on his way out of his office. Justin had sounded guarded, even a little belligerent. Good signs. He’s hiding something, and he’s scared.
Barrett stepped into the rain and cut across the small parking lot on the channel side of the station, kicking through the gray-white slop the rain had made of Monday’s snow. It had started last night and already the snow line on the mountainsides had retreated up to eight-hundred feet or so. He leapt over a puddle of rainwater backed up over a storm sewer clogged by mushy snow washing down Main Street. Rain spattered against his hat and shoulders as he walked up the hill. At Third, he crossed the street and climbed the short hill by the Spam Can to the state office building loading dock.
The woman behind the reception desk pointed out Justin’s cubicle. Barrett walked to it and stood in its opening, dripping water on the carpet, waiting for Justin to turn around. Justin continued typing, ignoring Barrett long enough to register his annoyance, then clicked all his windows closed and said to him as he stood, “Wanted to finished that up.”
Barrett let him play his games.
“This way,” Justin said. Barrett followed him across the office to a small conference room that must have doubled as a storeroom. Cardboard boxes were piled in one corner, and the bookshelves, which lined the walls, were stacked haphazardly with books, government reports, and three-ringed binders with titles like, “State of Alaska Home Health Care Policy” and “Care Delivery to Geriatric Populations.” A table, circled by chairs, crowded the room. At one end of it was a stack of papers and a phone; Justin pulled out a chair at the opposite end—so Barrett couldn’t face him directly—and sat down. Barrett circled the table, squeezing between the bookcase and table, and sat facing the door.
Justin leaned back in his chair. “What’s up?” he asked.
“How much money did you give Kris?” No point screwing around.
“I didn’t give her a thing.” His tone was testy.
“You didn’t you give her money to fly to Fairbanks?”
“Kris is in Fairbanks?” Justin sat up, looking at Barrett in surprise.
“She flew up yesterday.”
“You’re joking.” Justin said. “She didn’t tell me.”
“She bought a one-way ticket that cost three hundred and twelve dollars. It will cost her another three hundred and twelve dollars to get back here so that she can fly home. That’s a lot of money for someone who stays at the hostel and wears a Princess Tours poncho.”
“So she charged it,” Justin said.
“She didn’t. She doesn’t have a credit rating and the Alaska Airlines clerk remembers her paying cash. Where’d she get it?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said.
“Did she get it from Lambale?”
“How would I know?”
“You know Lambale’s missing.” Barrett made it a statement.
“I saw it in the paper yesterday.”
Barrett had spent the day before checking every possible route out of Juneau—there weren’t many. He’d found no trace of Lambale and was convinced that he hadn’t left town. “Do you know where he is?” It was a throwaway; Justin wouldn’t know.
“He’s in my closet.”
“You don’t think it strangely coincidental that the morning after Lambale vanishes, Kris skips town on a ticket she can’t afford?”
“Where’s the connection?” Justin asked. “What could she possibly have to do with Lambale disappearing?”
“I don’t know, Justin,” Barrett said gently. “But I think you’re in trouble.”
“Me?” Justin was caught off guard, but not yet worried. “I’ve never met the man.”
“What did you find under the floor at Vern Jones’s cabin Sunday?” Hit him from behind.
Justin didn’t move, but Barrett saw a wariness fill in behind his eyes.
“Nothing.”
He didn’t deny lifting the floorboard. Barrett would have enjoyed toying with him. Forensics had found polyester fibers stuck to the plywood: the type of fibers found on the hi-tech, overpriced gloves you bought at Foggy Mountain or REI. Nothing Vern would have owned.
“Pretty sharp, finding that spot. The forensics crew had taken the entire shack apart before they found it.”
“It was obvious,” Justin said. “Ice on the floor meant the insulation had been ripped out.” He relaxed slightly.
“You didn’t tell me about it.”
“Nothing there, nothing to tell.” Justin picked at something on the chair arm.
Barrett watched him trying to look unconcerned. You’ve got to learn to look a person in the eye when you lie to him. Out loud, he said, “The dust on the shelf below the floor had been scraped aside by something hard. Something metal.”
Justin didn’t say anything.
“What did you find, Justin?”
“The locks of hair. That was it.”
“You know that tampering with material evidence in a murder case is a felony? It can bring five years in this state.”
Justin glared at him, looked away.
Barrett circled and came in from another direction. “Where was Kris Monday night?”
“At my place.” Confidence trickled back into his voice.
“From when to when?”
“From five until about ten. I walked her back to the hostel.”
“You were with her the entire time?”
“No. I got home around eight.”
“Eight? How did she get into your house?”
“Apartment. I don’t lock it.”
“How do you know she was there since five?”
“She told me.”
“She told you?” Barrett shaded his tone with sarcasm.
“Yeah. She’d eaten dinner, done a laundry, taken a shower.”
“She made herself right at home.” More sarcasm.
“She’s a friend.”
Is he being defensive? “I’m sure.”
Justin pressed his lips together.
“How long does it take to take a shower?”
Justin didn’t answer.
“Was her hair still wet?”
“I didn’t notice.” His eyes wandered along the bookcase.
“Was her laundry done when you got home?”
“No,” he said, looking from the bookcases to the table.
“No? How many loads did she have?”
“Just her clothes.”
“Just her clothes?
“Yeah.”
“One load?”
Justin didn’t say anything.
“Three hou
rs to do one load?”
“Maybe it took her a while before she decided to do it.” He flared a little.
“Maybe.” Come on, fight me. “What did you do with her from eight to ten?”
“We…”
“Did you sleep with her?” Barrett was playing with him; he knew Justin hadn’t; Kris was more than he could handle.
“No.”
“So what do you do for two hours with a pretty woman?”
“We talked.”
“About what?”
“About things.”
Barrett let his voice harden. “Quit jerking me around, Justin.”
Justin stared at the table.
“Do you want a lawyer?” Drag him back into reality. “Should I read you your Miranda rights?”
“We came down here,” he said unexpectedly.
“Here?” That was a hot date.
“Yeah. We wanted to check an inconsistency in something Ben had said.”
Barrett pulled out his notebook. The hole in Kris’s story looked promising, but this was a twist he hadn’t expected. “Start from the beginning,” he said and Justin told him about the forged signatures on Ben’s Bonus stubs.
Barrett sat back in his chair and pressed his pencil point into his thigh until it hurt. It was an extraordinary piece of detective work. He never would’ve found it. Stewart. Barrett’d been negligent; he’d forgotten the old trapper in his rush to find Lambale yesterday.
Barrett looked at Justin. Tall, ungainly, and bright. He was slouched in the chair staring blankly at his hands resting in his lap. He’d still not answered the questions Barrett’d come to ask. Why was he covering for Kris? Did he think this was a game? Did he have the hots for her?
“That was good work,” Barrett said, leaning forward on the table. Justin’s mouth twisted into a rueful smile.
Pause. “Justin, Kris is using you. She’s using you for an alibi and she’s using you to keep quiet about whatever it is you found at Vern’s.”
“Up yours,” he said.
“So why didn’t she tell you she was leaving for Fairbanks?”
“Maybe she tried to.”
“You got voice mail?” he asked.
No answer.