Restless in the Grave

by Dana Stabenow

  “What caused the crash?” Jim said.

  Campbell picked up the part in the evidence bag and pointed. “See the nut?”

  They did.

  “It was loose,” Campbell said.

  “How loose?” Jim said.

  “NTSB says loose enough to start leaking oil as soon as he started the engine. Not loose enough for him to spot if he opened the cowling for a look-see, and not loose enough for it to show on his oil pressure gauge until he was well in the air.”

  “Yikes,” Jim said.

  “That’s what the NTSB guy said when he found it,” Campbell said.

  “Explain,” Kate said, looking at Jim.

  “The nut holds the bell housing over the oil screen,” Jim said. “If the nut is loose, oil leaks out through the screen and the housing. Oil pressure would drop to zero and the temperature would redline.” He saw Kate’s expression and elaborated. “The moving parts inside the engine would loose lubrication and coolant and start running rough and heating up. Take, what, ten minutes for the engine to seize up?”

  “Fifteen, max, the NTSB guy said,” Campbell said.

  “He should have known he was in trouble almost immediately,” Jim said. “Why didn’t he just turn around and put her back down in Newenham?”

  “NTSB guy speculated a little about that for me,” Campbell said. “Said it depended on just how loose the nut was.”

  Jim nodded. “Could have backed off in the air from the vibration of the engine.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who serviced his engine?”

  “Grant himself was a licensed A&P mechanic, and he employed another, who was working on a Cessna in Naknek when Grant went down.”

  “Annual up to date?”

  Campbell nodded. “He was an asshole, but he wasn’t a sloppy asshole. Even the people who hated him admit that he was a first-class pilot.”

  There was a short silence. “So a screw came loose,” Kate said.

  “A nut,” Jim said.

  “Whatever,” Kate said. She looked at Campbell. “Sloppy or not, what makes this a case of anything other than pilot error? Or mechanic error? Or in this case both?”

  Campbell sighed and leaned back to look out the tall windows that constituted most of the front wall of the little house in the big woods. The crescent moon in the clear sky combined with the frosting of snow on the ground beneath to generate enough reflected light to fill nearly all the shadows in the room. In front of the fireplace Mutt snorted in her sleep, her thick gray coat turned a lustrous silver in the moonlight. “First of all, motive,” he said.

  “Who?” Kate said.

  “Nearly everyone in Newenham,” Campbell said. “Including my wife.”

  “The aforementioned Wyanet Chouinard?” Kate said.

  “The very same.”

  “Awkward,” Kate said.

  “I’ll say,” Campbell said.

  “She hate him enough to kill him?” she said bluntly.

  Campbell’s gaze lingered on the scar on Kate’s neck. A thin rope of ridged skin that was only a little lighter than the surrounding skin on the strong brown throat, it reached nearly from ear to ear. “I don’t think she does, or ever did hate him,” he said, “but she was damn near the only independent operator left in the aviation business between Anchorage and Unalaska other than Grant. He wanted to buy her out. She refused. He got pretty nasty about it, in front of witnesses, and they had words. Witnesses say he threatened her, and those same witnesses say she threatened him right back. Everybody who saw it says it got pretty lively.”

  Kate had thrown out the question partly as a means to gauge just how committed Campbell was to finding out the truth of Grant’s death, as opposed to finding his wife innocent of any wrongdoing in conjunction with it. Jim saw that Liam’s sangfroid had passed the test, and he breathed again.

  “When did this argument take place?” Kate said.

  Campbell sighed. “Oh, that would be the day before he died.”

  “He have any public fights with anyone else?”

  “Who he didn’t fight with would constitute the vast minority of the Newenham population,” Campbell said. “As I said before, he strong-armed a lot of the businesses he bought into selling.”

  “How?”

  Campbell shrugged. “Bought up their debt and foreclosed. Bought the buildings they were doing their business out of and raised the rent on them, or just booted them out. Bought out their competitors and lowered prices to drive them out of business.”

  “Ruthless,” Kate said. Her fingertips were starting to tingle and her nose was beginning to twitch. From the corner of her eye she saw Jim repress a smile.

  “You could say that,” Campbell said. “The last three, four years, he was not our most popular citizen. Not that he ever had been before, but he did ramp things up after he bought Chinook.”

  “Was this right after he married Clementina?”

  “What?” Campbell said. “No. No, he was fifty-nine. He’d been married to Clementina for thirty years.”

  However much inherited wealth had been made available to Grant when he married so very well, his recent buying spree must have accounted for a great deal of it, and even inherited wealth ran out at some point. Even Tannehill inherited wealth. Kate wondered why it had taken Grant so long to begin spending it in such a high, wide, and handsome fashion. “Okay, so you’re kind of overflowing with motive,” she said. “What else?”

  “Means,” Campbell said. “The bell housing and the bolt that fastened it on is immediately obvious the minute you unbutton the cowling. Even to me. Wy showed me on her own Cub. Anybody with an open-end box wrench could have reached in and given that bolt a half a turn and buttoned her back up and walked away. Takes about sixty seconds. Wy did it for me, twice. I timed her.”

  “But how many people would know how to do that?” Kate said.

  Jim snorted. “How much have you assimilated just by riding in small planes all your life? How many private pilots in Alaska, what is it, one in thirty-seven? How many of them have families who have been raised around planes?”

  “Including Grant’s,” Campbell said. “His brother, Fred, is a pilot. Two of his kids are pilots. Well. One, now.”

  “One?” Kate said.

  “The oldest daughter, Irene, was a helicopter pilot serving in Afghanistan. She died in combat in November.”

  Kate winced. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah,” Campbell said, “not a good year for the Grant family.”

  “So,” Jim said, coming back to the point of Liam’s presence in the Park, “you don’t really know if you have a crime, you’ve just got a dead guy and a bunch of people happy he is.”

  Liam raised a hand. “I know. I know. And no one cares. They’d all be just as happy if Finn stayed buried and they got on with their lives.” He brooded. “Including his family. Maybe even most especially his family.”

  He frowned down into his mug. “I like Newenham, Jim,” he said. “It was meant to be exile, punishment—”

  Kate looked at Jim, who gave a tiny shake of his head as if to say, Later.

  “But I like the place,” Liam said. “I like the people, I like the lifestyle.” He pulled a wry mouth. “It’s the fucking Wild, Wild West. I like being three hundred plus miles away from John Dillinger Barton, with no road. We’ve got espresso and satellite television, just like downtown. Has a one-room library but Jeannie’s a demon for interlibrary loan, and if she can’t get it for me, there’s always Amazon. The people are never boring. I’m learning tai chi, if you can believe that, from an old fart down there.” He sighed. “And there’s been plenty of action on the job. A little too much, if you want to know the truth. But I’m handling it, I think pretty well. I feel … dug in.”

  “You’ve found a home,” Jim said.

  Campbell looked around, at the moon shining through the tall windows, at the crackling fire in the fireplace, at the enormous half wolf–half husky sprawled in front of it, the quilt crumple
d beneath her, and finally at the woman with the short dark hair and the disturbingly direct gaze curled up next to Jim. He looked back at Jim and their eyes met in mutual understanding. “Yeah. I think I have.”

  “But,” Kate said, “you’re not even sure a murder has taken place.”

  “No.”

  “And your problem is that without more evidence, you can’t justify investigating it yourself.”

  “Plus press of other business,” Campbell said. “Moccasin Man’s started a meth lab somewhere, I’m certain of it, and I’m riding herd on the usual assortment of drunks and thieves and abusers.” He hesitated. “I won’t be able to pay you anything close to what he—” He nodded at Jim. “—says you usually get.”

  “Hmm.” Kate pretended to think it over. “Once in a while, I like to polish my halo by taking on a case pro bono.”

  Campbell’s expression lightened. “I can front you a thousand for expenses.”

  “I’ll take it,” she said promptly. “What if I don’t find anything?”

  Campbell was silent for a moment. “You’ll find something,” he said at last, and drained his mug. “I don’t know what, but something.” He shrugged. “Call it a hunch.”

  Kate’s eyes narrowed. Cop hunches were not to be ignored. “And?”

  Campbell’s expression was bleak. “And it has to be laid to rest, either as an accident or murder.” He drained his mug. “Or Wy and I are going to have to leave.”

  “That won’t help,” Jim said. “It’ll follow you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  * * *

  Later, Jim said, “You going?”

  They were cuddled spoon fashion in bed. He had filled her in on Campbell’s backstory, all of it this time. She rolled over to face him. “It would get me out of town at a very good time.”

  He thought about it. “You don’t want to be around for Annie to lean on while she’s finding her feet as the new board chair.”

  “You are smarter than the average bear, Chopin.”

  “And,” he said with caution, “maybe clear out some cobwebs, too.”

  She knew immediately what he hadn’t said. “You mean Old Sam.”

  “Yeah.”

  Her turn to be silent as she thought back to October and November of the previous year. The lives of childhood gods should never be too closely examined, but Old Sam had been determined to leave her no choice. At last she said, “You’re right about that, too.”

  “It doesn’t change who he was, Kate.”

  “I know that,” she said. “Nothing he ever did could change my opinion of him. It’s just, sometimes I wonder…”

  “What?”

  She sighed. “How well we ever know anyone.”

  “Pedestals are dangerous things.”

  “Especially the highest ones.”

  He had no answer for her, and fell back on misdirection. “The real reason you want to take this on is because you can’t wait to tear into a real case. Your snoop’s blood is itching.”

  “Well,” she said, drawing it out. “There is that, too.” She smiled into the dark. In fact, her nose was eager to poke itself into the personal business of a bunch of people she’d never met, to sniff out the distinctive aromas of means, motive, and opportunity, to boldly go where no nose had gone before. She laughed, a deep sound that rasped against the scar, the remnant of another case, long ago and far away but never wholly forgotten.

  “Just try to wrap it up in a week,” he said, sounding a little grumpy even to his own ears. “Otherwise I might have to come down there and clear it myself.”

  “Oooh, big talk from the big trooper.” She investigated. “And getting bigger.”

  In one swift movement he rolled her over on her back, kneeing her legs apart and settling himself between them. “I’ll just mark my spot.”

  * * *

  The next morning she packed a bag and Jim drove her and Campbell to the airport. It was another clear, cold day, and the snarl of sharp peaks on the eastern horizon increased in menace with the late arctic dawn.

  The gloom dispersed as George Perry preflighted the single Otter turbo and a Beaver full of horny, thirsty Suulutaq miners came in from the mine, more than ready for their week off.

  The sun peeked over Big Bump as they boarded. Kate, having taken an extra moment for a fond farewell from Jim, was last in line, and as she put her foot on the bottom step of the airstairs she noticed another plane parked nearby. It was a small, elegant jet, twin engines, very sleek, clad in anonymous white paint, the N-number lettered in very small black letters on the engines. She couldn’t quite make them out.

  “Nice, huh?” George said, looking behind her from the doorway. “Grumman Gulfstream Two.”

  “A corporate jet?” Kate said.

  “Yeah. Some Suulutaq bigwigs. Frank took ’em over to the mine in the Beaver this morning.” George, tall, thin, a cavernous face with a five o’clock shadow present at eight o’clock in the morning, looked just a little smug. “Good thing we got the runway paved last fall.”

  Yet another example of Suulutaq’s largesse, and it grated on Kate, but only a little. Maybe when the city of Niniltna finally incorporated, they could start charging landing fees.

  “You getting in or not, Shugak?” he said impatiently.

  Kate got in and sat down across from Campbell. Mutt padded in behind her and lay down in the space between the pilot’s seat and the rest of the passengers. George put on his headset, and the turbine engine started to whine.

  The last thing Kate saw as they taxied away was the sexy little corporate jet lording it over the end of the runway. When the Otter turned for takeoff, the sun finally tore free of the clutch of the Quilaks and escaped to the sky, and a shaft of light caught the engine facing Kate, illuminating its identification number. The first letter was a C.

  Interesting, Kate thought. All U.S. tail numbers began with an N. C for Canada, maybe? Global Harvest Resources, Incorporated, was an international conglomerate, and Canada was the world’s third largest producer of gold. Maybe they were in town to investigate the possibility of investing in the Suulutaq. Make sense if they wanted a piece of the action going on next door.

  George turned the Otter loose and they lifted up off the end of the newly paved runway, and it was with no little relief that Kate left the newly minted international gold capital of North America behind, at least for a while.

  Watching from the ground, Jim remembered the view of Kate following Liam Campbell into the plane, and wondered how smart he’d been to send her off with a man whom he knew from personal observation was irresistible to the ladies. There had been some brisk competition for the fairer sex between the two of them, that wild time in the Valley.

  His gaze followed the Otter until it was out of sight.

  Six

  MONDAY, JANUARY 18

  Newenham

  Newenham was the largest city in southwestern Alaska, the market town for the dozens of tiny, mostly Yupik Native villages surrounding it for hundreds of miles in every direction. Some of them had begun as fish camps, where the Natives went every summer to catch their year’s supply of salmon, either to eat or to sell it for money to buy fuel.

  Other villages got their start as remote canneries back in the day, when Bristol Bay salmon went into a can instead of being flash frozen and shrink-wrapped, and when by law you could fish for them only from a sail-powered boat. Some began as mining camps for gold, platinum, or coal, and some as fuel stops and mail and freight dumps for the Alaska Steamship Company. A few were the result of adventurers looking for a place far enough away from the madding crowd to put down a quiet root and prosper on the 160 acres of land provided for in the Homestead Act.

  Very few were viable in the long term due to a lack of anything remotely approaching a year-round industry. Salmon were being farmed now in Europe, Canada, and South America in quantities and at a price that had severely impacted Alaska’s wild salmon catch, and the nascent ecotourism industry was
barely worthy of the name. Especially since that determinedly sole-source provider, Finn Grant, had bought up everyone else in the flightseeing, fly-in fishing, and big game hunting business. With his death, tourism out of Newenham was at a standstill.

  First and foremost, Newenham was the regional market town. In winter on snow machines and four-wheelers, in summer on boats, year-round in airplanes the villagers came to Newenham to buy groceries and supplies, get their eyes checked and their teeth fixed, visit relatives, stand trial, fly to Anchorage to go to the AFN Convention in October or to catch another plane to Hawaii for spring break in March.

  But Newenham wasn’t only their market town, it was also the headquarters for three national parks, four national game preserves, a dozen wildlife refuges state and federal, and an offshore petroleum reserve, access to which had been stymied in a series of court decisions over the fifty years since statehood. It was also the seat of the regional government, state judiciary, and state law enforcement. Although the latter had lately been reduced to a sole-source provider, one Sergeant Liam Campbell.

  Liam yawned and steered his vehicle back over to the right side of the road. He couldn’t remember one single night’s uninterrupted sleep in the past year. This could not go on. It wasn’t the first time he’d said that to himself, but this time, dammit, he meant it. Mayor Jim Earl was going to have to find the wherewithal to hire some city cops, and Major John Dillinger Barton, the Lord High Everything Else of the Alaska State Troopers, was going to have to chisel enough funds out of the state to assign Liam at least one more trooper. Two would be better and three ideal, but he’d take what he could get. If he were closer to retirement, he could really make a statement and threaten to quit over it, but he liked his job and he wasn’t independently wealthy. While Finn Grant’s death had sent a lot of business his wife’s way, her air taxi was still barely self-supporting. Not to mention the kid they had in trade school.