Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Dana Stabenow

  Liam took one look at the clouds, so low that if he went outside and reached up he thought he might touch them, and said firmly, “I’m not.”

  “I’m grounded,” Wy said. “At least until this afternoon.”

  Prince pounced. “Why, did you hear something on the forecast? Is it going to clear?”

  Wy shook her head, almost amused. “Not likely. There’s a gale warning out for Area 5A. It’ll be moving north.”

  Prince stared out at the dark skies with a gloomy expression. The third interrogation of Teddy Engebretsen and John Kvichak the night before had produced no changes in their story, the result of which was that Prince now wanted very much to talk to Rebecca Hanover. She had shown up at Wy’s house at first light on the off chance that the weather might look better out of Wy’s window than it did from the trooper post. Liam had invited her to stay for breakfast.

  “At least it isn’t snowing anymore,” Jo said, refilling coffee mugs all around.

  A timer dinged and Bridget opened the oven door. The heavenly aroma of Bisquick coffee cake wafted through the room. Jim and Luke were sitting on the couch with their feet propped on the coffee table, Liam in the armchair. Jo replaced the coffeepot and perched on a stool at the counter next to Wy. Bridget cut the cake into squares and handed the squares around on saucers. For a while the only sounds were the dulcet growlings of Bob Edwards on the radio, the creaking of the house beneath the undiminished onslaught of wind, and grunts of pleasure as the coffee cake went down. Bridget was complimented lavishly all around, and she put her finger in her chin and curtsied in response.

  Prince paced restlessly in front of the windows, until Liam said, “Why don’t you go on down to the post?”

  “What for?”

  He shrugged. “Somebody might call in a triple homicide.”

  “Like we could respond in this,” she said, but she picked up her hat.

  When the door shut behind her Jim said, “What a hot dog.”

  Liam gave a tolerant shrug. “She’s smart and quick and ambitious. All she needs is a little seasoning.”

  “She had two different homicides, one a multiple, the first day she got here,” Jo said. “She got her name in the paper and everything.”

  “Thanks to you,” Liam said.

  Jo refused to curtsy, but she did bow her head in arrogant acceptance of what wasn’t exactly an accolade. “In fact, you both did.”

  “Yeah, I was thrilled.”

  Jo snorted. “If you didn’t want your name in the paper, you shouldn’t have become a trooper.”

  “More coffee, anyone?” Bridget said brightly.

  Jo gave Wy a long look. Wy wasn’t talking much, and she noticed that her friend was keeping to the opposite side of whatever part of the room Liam was in. She wondered what had happened out at Nenevok Creek. She noticed Jim looking at Liam and wondering the same thing.

  Bridget was still standing in front of her with the coffeepot and a smile. “Sorry,” Jo said, and held out her mug. “Sure, and thanks.”

  Wy and Liam had come in separately the night before, and had exchanged perhaps ten words total before Liam went out to his camper for the night. There was no sneaking back in, either, not that there would have to be with Tim out of town. It wasn’t like there hadn’t been plenty of noise already to contend with from the back bedroom, she thought acidly. Not that she hadn’t done her best to put Luke through his paces on the living room couch.

  She looked at Luke. She should have known better. Beautiful men, like beautiful women, knew that their faces were their fortune. They didn’t have to do anything but be beautiful. Luke, it must be admitted, was extremely beautiful, but beauty went only so far in bed, and even less far out of bed.

  Bridget was beautiful, too, but she was also smart and funny. Jo hated to admit it, but Jim’s taste in the opposite sex might be better than her own. “So you think Rebecca Hanover killed her husband and ran off because she didn’t like being stuck out in the Bush for three months?” she said out loud.

  “That’s not for publication, Jo,” Liam said sternly.

  Jo’s fair skin, the bane of her existence, flushed right up to the roots of her hair. “I heard you the first time,” she said between clenched teeth.

  He examined her expression for a moment, and then, amazingly, backed down. “I know. I’m sorry, Jo.”

  She managed a brief nod, and to salvage her pride added, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t write about it. But I won’t use anything you tell us here today without your say-so.” She looked at Wy, who was glaring at Liam.

  “I know,” Liam said again.

  “I thought Woodward and Bernstein used two sources for every story,” Jim said.

  Jo appreciated the effort he was making to lighten the air. “They did.”

  “You don’t?”

  She matched his effort. “Not if the first source is a state trooper with twelve years on the job and a reputation for upholding truth, justice and the American way.”

  There was a round of nervous laughter. Everybody looked at Liam, who sighed. “Yeah, okay.” He looked at Wy, who was studiously examining her coffee mug. His lips tightened.

  “From the beginning,” Jo prompted him. She didn’t know what was going on there, but she was willing to act like the lightning rod for the time being.

  Liam didn’t strike. Instead, he told the story simply, beginning with the Mayday intercepted by the Alaska Airlines flight deck crew and his and Prince’s arrival at the scene. He put together the case against Engebretsen and Kvichak in clipped, disinterested terms, including their passionate denials.

  “I never met anyone who was arrested who ever was guilty of anything,” Jo observed.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Liam’s smile was thin and strained, and Wy tried not to feel guilty. What else could I do? she thought. He had to know. Maybe he’s right, I should have told him sooner, but it’s only five months since I saw him again, only a month that we’ve been together.

  She thought back to the afternoon at the mining camp. I love you, Wy, Liam had said, and so she had told him, then and there, and he, at first disbelieving and then enraged, had stalked up to the cabin in a huff, ostensibly to search for evidence to help solve the mystery of Mark Hanover’s murder but really, she knew full well, to put her far enough out of reach that he wouldn’t be tempted to deck her.

  She didn’t blame him, but she wouldn’t fall into the trap of blaming herself, either, not a second time. Shit happens. You can’t let it define you, you can’t let it define the rest of your life. She hadn’t, and she wouldn’t let him do so, either.

  Jo’s voice recalled her to the present. “But you still don’t like them for it.”

  The trooper shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. Why’d they call in the Mayday? According to Wy the Hanovers weren’t due to be picked up until Labor Day. If they did it, they could have left the body lying where it was, ready for the nearest grizzly to wander out of the woods and eat the evidence.”

  “In that case, where’s Rebecca?” Jo said.

  Labor Day, Wy thought, and remembered the last time she’d delivered supplies to Nenevok Creek. Three fishermen getting restive as she fought the cargo netting and the bungee cords. Rebecca watching with a wistful expression on her face, arms cradling the stack of magazines Wy had brought in for her. Mark Hanover coming up the path and-oh. “Oh hell,” Wy said.

  Everyone looked at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I totally forgot.”

  “What?” Liam said.

  “The fishermen were in a hurry to get to the lodge and I was humping it to get the plane unloaded and we’d hit an air pocket on the way in and the cargo had shifted a little in flight, you know, just enough to wedge itself into-”

  “Wy,” Liam said. “What did you forget?”

  Wy took a deep breath. “The last time I made a supply run into Nenevok Creek, Mark Hanover pulled me to one side and said they m
ight need another order of supplies, a big one this time. Like I said, my passengers were in a hurry and I wasn’t paying much attention. I told him to get me a list and he said he would and we took off.”

  There was a brief, electric silence.

  “You only just remembered this now?” Liam said.

  “I’m sorry,” Wy said helplessly. I’ve had other things on my mind, she thought, and knew by the shift of expression on his face that he had seen that thought reflected in her eyes.

  “A big order of supplies,” Jo said, her eyes bright, her nose all but twitching. “At the end of the summer? Nobody orders supplies at the end of the summer. You’re just inviting the bears in, leaving a bunch of food sitting around your cabin.”

  “Unless,” Liam said.

  “Unless,” Jim said, “you’re ordering up enough to see you through the winter in that cabin.”

  “From what her friend Nina said,” Liam said slowly, “Rebecca Hanover wasn’t more than lukewarm about spending the summer out there.”

  “If he told her about this wonderful new idea just before they were scheduled to leave-” Jo said.

  Liam looked at Wy. “Tell me everything you remember about Rebecca Hanover.”

  “I already did.”

  “Tell me again.”

  He was all trooper now, firm, implacable, totally focused on the job. He bore no resemblance whatever to the furious man who had raked her over the coals at Nenevok Creek. In one way, she welcomed it. In another, she did not. She got up and went to the corner desk from where she ran her business, and pulled out a tall red book filled with dated, lined pages. She opened it and flipped through May, until she found the day she wanted. “Here it is, May twenty-ninth, the Saturday before Memorial Day. Passengers Mark and Rebecca Hanover, along with two hundred pounds of freight, to Nenevok Creek.”

  Wy looked up. “She was frightened. First time she’d been in a small plane, I think. But he jollied her on board. They sat in the back-we had to take the Cessna because of all the freight-and I strapped some of their canned goods into the front seat to balance out the load. It was a clear day, maybe an eight-knot wind, easy flight, eighty-five minutes there and back again, no problem.”

  “How did she strike you?”

  Her eyes narrowed in memory. “As a dyed-in-the-wool city girl,” she said after a moment. “She’s beautiful, blond hair, blue eyes, great figure. Immaculate manicure. Soft voice, called him honey a lot. She’s not your typical Bush rat. Her husband had the gold bug, and she was along for the ride.”

  “Willingly?”

  She considered. “If you mean by that, did he have a pair of handcuffs on her, no.”

  “But?”

  “But.” She met Liam’s eyes straight on for the first time in forty-eight hours. “But she wasn’t happy about his decision.”

  “She think it was pie in the sky? Gold mining is, mostly.”

  Wy shook her head. “Wasn’t the money. She just didn’t want to be out there. It was like pulling up a hothouse orchid and trying to transplant it on the moon. She knew it. He didn’t.” She looked down at the Day Timer, leafed through some more pages. “I dropped off supplies half a dozen times. Every time, she was waiting at the strip. I took her some newspapers and magazines and she was, well, almost pathetically grateful.”

  She closed the book and raised her head. “I don’t think she killed him, Liam. She isn’t the type.”

  “Everybody’s the type, Wy, given the right provocation.”

  “I know you always say that,” she said stubbornly, “but she loved him. They had this kind of, I don’t know, sexual thing going on that practically gave off sparks. He was gorgeous, too, one good-looking hunk of man. What’s more, I’d say he loved her as much as she did him.”

  “Never underestimate what three months in the Bush will do to a relationship,” Jim observed. “You see the results in the front pages of her rag every day.” He hooked a thumb at Jo.

  “Hey,” she said, faintly protesting. “I resemble that remark.”

  Wy put the book back on the desk. “Are you still absolutely sure Hanover’s death has nothing to do with Opal’s?”

  His eyes went from her to the map on the wall behind her. “Different weapon. A long way to go on foot in a very short time. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.”

  The phone rang and Bridget answered it. Liam could hear Prince’s voice. “One moment,” Bridget said. “It’s for you,” she added unnecessarily, and handed it over.

  Prince wasted no time in pleasantries. “I just got a call via the marine operator. She relayed a call from an old guy up at”-he heard the rustle of paper in the background-“at Weary River. Is that right, Weary River?”

  He carried the walk-around phone to the map on the wall. “Yeah,” he said, locating Weary River. About halfway between Rainbow and Russell. “I’ve got it.”

  “Well, this old guy, he’s Italian or used to be before he homesteaded out at Weary River and turned American, and she couldn’t hardly understand him but she thinks he called to say that he’d found a body.” Prince’s excitement crackled down the line.

  “Where?”

  “A place called Rainbow.”

  He moved his finger up. “Got it. Rainbow.” He was very conscious of Wy looking over his shoulder and the rest of them crowding around behind her. “Who’s dead?”

  “A guy name of Peter Cole.”

  “Peter Cole?” He felt Wy’s indrawn breath and looked at her. “Hold on.” To Wy he said, “You know him?”

  She nodded, dazed. “He’s on my mail route.” She swallowed and met his eyes in sick apprehension. “The same day I went to Kagati Lake and found Opal Nunapitchuk.”

  “You saw him that day?”

  She shook her head. “I almost never do. He’s a hermit, doesn’t like being around people much. He left the bag to be picked up on the strip. I took it and left the incoming mailbag in its place.”

  “Is that any way to treat the U.S. mail?” Jim said.

  Wy shrugged. “It’s his way. He doesn’t hurt anybody.” She winced. “Or he didn’t.”

  “Prince,” Liam said into the phone. “How did Peter Cole die?”

  Her voice was triumphant. “The old Italian guy said he was shot.” She couldn’t have been happier if Ted Bundy were loose in the Bay.

  “With what?”

  A little deflated, Prince said, “He didn’t say, just that Cole was shot. He’s got a pretty thick accent,” she added. “It’s not easy to understand him over the radio.”

  He was looking at the map, following the thick black line that marked Wy’s mail route, some of the destinations printed on the map, some penciled in later by Wy. Kagati Lake. Russell. Weary River, where the old Italian guy homesteaded. He tapped the map. “What’s his name, do you know?” he asked Wy.

  “Julie Baldessario.”

  “Julie?”

  “Giuliano. But everyone calls him Julie.”

  “He’s a reliable kind of guy?”

  She nodded. “He’s about a million years old, came into the country after World War II. Lost his family in the Holocaust. Just looking for a little peace and quiet, I think.”

  “Good story,” Jo said, interested.

  Jim smacked her lightly on the arm, and she subsided.

  “But he’s very much all there,” Wy said. “If he says he found Peter Cole shot, he found Peter Cole shot. The question is, what was Julie doing out in this?” She waved a hand at the storm outside.

  Liam ignored her, continuing to trace the map with his forefinger. “Rainbow, Kemuk.” His finger had to make a little jog to one side. “Nenevok Creek.”

  He stood up. “We’ve got dead people at Kagati Lake, Russell and Nenevok Creek. All were murdered. All were killed within five days of each other. Some nut is shooting his way from settlement to settlement.”

  Wy was still staring at the map. Her face was white.

  “Wy?” he said, touching her arm. “Wy, what is it?”
/>
  Mute, she pointed.

  Her mail route took a dogleg between Rainbow and Kemuk and another between Warehouse Mountain, Kokwok and Akamanuk, but south of Akamanuk…

  South of Akamanuk was Old Man Creek.

  EIGHTEEN

  Wood River Mountains, September 6

  She was so cold.

  She couldn’t feel her hands anymore. Her feet had been numb since the night before.

  She knew a storm was coming the previous afternoon when the low, dark clouds took over the sky and the wind began to bite into her flesh, but she’d never been outside in a storm before and she had had no idea how cold it would be.

  She’d found rudimentary shelter in a hollow against the side of the uprooted cottonwood. What little wit she had left had murmured that something else might regard that hollow as its own, but she was too tired and too hungry and too cold to care. She found a long branch and propped it against the trunk over the hollow. She found other branches and leaned them against the first. She scraped together a covering of pine needles and fallen leaves and more branches, and then she crawled beneath it and curled into a sodden ball, shoving her hands between her thighs. If he found her, he found her. She had to rest. And she could go no further in the dark. She had fallen the night before and hurt her leg. She could still walk, but for a few paralyzing moments she had thought that it was broken, that she would be unable to move, to run, to flee, to fight if need be.

  If he had come on her then, he would have had her.

  Somehow, she had managed to pull herself to her feet and stagger on. She knew he wasn’t far behind her. She could feel him coming, feel his rage, feel his hands on her, his penis thrusting into her, and she simply could not bear to endure that again. Better to die out here in the wilderness. Mark was dead-no, no, don’t think of Mark, bleeding his life away while she went like a lamb to his slaughterer-she might as well be, too. All she wanted now was to die in peace, and not to be buried next to all the other Elaines in that sun-dappled dell of death.

  In some part of her mind, the part that was still able to wonder, to think, she was amazed that she had made it this far. She couldn’t believe that she had escaped in the first place. Squirting the Windex into his eyes had been pure instinct; she hadn’t even known she had still been carrying it.