Icy Clutches

by Aaron Elkins

  "Accurate?" Arthur cried. “Good heavens, man, this is a Cusinart!"

  "Well, I know, and I'm sure it's a good one. But it's a spring scale. I need a—what do you call it—a beam scale, a counter scale."

  "You don't mean the old-fashioned kind where you put little weights on one side?"

  "Right, and something that will weigh in grams and centigrams."

  "I'll see what I can do,” Arthur said. He was put out. The box was snatched back. “I'm afraid I have more bad news for you,” he said grumpily. “We've been unable to come up with the records you wanted. If such things ever existed."

  "Records?"

  "Of the recovery of those bones in 1964; the ones that came out of the glacier. Owen told me you were interested."

  Gideon had forgotten all about that too. First-thing-in-the-morning corpses had a way of clearing the mind. “Damn, they could have been useful. You don't have any files on it at all?"

  "We don't have any files from 1964. On anything."

  "Maybe your office in Washington, D.C.—"

  Arthur shook his head. “I called. Nothing."

  "But there was a skeletal-identification expert involved. He must have submitted a report somewhere."

  "No doubt, but it's a little difficult when we don't even have a name to go on."

  Gideon nodded. “Well, thanks for trying, anyway.” Arthur took pity on him. “I still have Owen working on it for you. Maybe he'll turn something up."

  "Maybe."

  "You never know,” Arthur said more cheerfully, his mind turning elsewhere; to his coming press conference, perhaps. “You just never know."

  * * * *

  It didn't take Owen long to turn something up. By the time Gideon got back to his room to wash up, there was a note under the door.

  Gideon—

  Found your skeletal-identification expert for you. Professor Kenneth Worriner, University of Alaska Anthropology Department. Retired, still lives in Juneau. Telephone number 586-3774.

  We aim to please.

  Owen

  Glacier Bay Lodge, which advertised itself as Alaska's premier wilderness resort, took the “wilderness” part seriously. Communication with the outside world wasn't easy. There were no television sets, no radios, no telephones in the rooms. There was a single pay phone on the veranda, but it required a calling credit card, which Gideon was unable to find in his wallet. (Did he own one? He made a mental note to ask Julie.) The only other telephone was in the manager's office, where the shaken Mr. Granle had taken refuge behind his locked door.

  He answered Gideon's knock, understandably apprehensive, and when he saw it was Gideon he shrank back. The message on his drawn face was as clear as if he'd spoken: My God, what's happened now?

  "It's all right,” Gideon said quickly. “I just wanted to use your phone."

  Mr. Granle motioned to it and edged out of his office as Gideon came in, giving Gideon plenty of room. He closed the door softly behind him.

  Gideon dialed the number, a little uneasy about calling Worriner now that he was doing it. Say Worriner had been in his forties in 1964; he'd be in his seventies now. If he'd been in his fifties, he'd be in his eighties. How welcome would this call be? How much would he remember? How much would he care?

  The telephone was answered on the third ring. The voice was thin, pinched. “Hello?"

  In his eighties, Gideon thought. Well into them. “Professor Worriner?"

  A noticeable hesitation. “Yes.” No one had called him professor in a while.

  "My name is Gideon Oliver, sir. I'm a physical anthropologist too. I'm up at Glacier Bay, and I'm working on some human skeletal fragments—"

  "Please hold on, I better turn down the TV.” The telephone clunked down. The old man's speech had been a little slurred. Dentures not in? A stroke? Was Worriner up to this? Gideon shifted uncomfortably.

  Worriner returned after what seemed like a long time. “Yes?"

  "I'm working on some skeletal fragments up here, sir, and—"

  "Excuse me. Is this going to take a while?"

  "Well, a few minutes, I suppose. It's about—"

  Gideon heard a querulous sigh. “Hold on, I better turn down the soup.” The telephone was put down again, more softly. A murmured, regretful “almost ready, too,” was just audible.

  Gideon shifted again in the overpadded chair. He was keeping Worriner from his meal, something octogenarians didn't usually take lightly. This wasn't going very well.

  After a good ninety seconds Worriner returned. “Yes, hello?"

  "Sir, if this isn't a convenient time, I can—"

  "No, it's quite all right.” He paused. “I'm sorry if I sounded uncordial."

  "Not at all. The bones I'm working on seem to be from the same party that you worked on in 1964, and—"

  "Gideon Oliver, did you say?"

  "That's right."

  "I know you by reputation, of course.” It was his first show of interest. “It's a pleasure to talk to you."

  "Thank you.” Gideon wished intensely that he could say the same thing, but he'd never heard of Kenneth Worriner. He almost said it anyway, but settled for safety's sake on, “It's a pleasure to talk to you, sir."

  "And you say you've found some more skeletal material from the Tirku survey?"

  "That's right,” Gideon said, relieved. At least Worriner remembered.

  A chair scraped. Worriner grunted as he sat down. “Well, that's very remarkable. What do you have? Where did you find it? Have you been able to make an identification?” His dry voice, vacant and listless a few moments before, was crackling. “Listen, have you seen a copy of my report? Did you find any evidence of—"

  Gideon needn't have worried. When, after all, had he ever met an old physical anthropologist who'd lost his enthusiasm for the field? Mention bones and they came alive, whatever shape they were in. Gideon had high hopes of becoming such an old anthropologist himself one day.

  "I'd like very much to see a copy of your report,” he said. “That's why I'm calling. Things have gotten more complicated, Professor. It looks as if there was a homicide involved."

  "Please, call me Kenneth, will you? A homicide? Do you mean to say you've found signs of presumptively lethal antemortem trauma not attributable to the avalanche?"

  Gideon smiled. That would have been a mouthful even for a man with his dentures in. “That's right, Kenneth; a one-inch perforation along the right squamous suture, at the parietal notch. Definitely lethal, definitely antemortem."

  "Have you identified the skull? As I recall, there were two people involved, weren't there? No, three; two men and a woman. Is that right? It's been a long time."

  "That's exactly right."

  "Ah, you have no idea how much I'd like to come up and see what you have, Gideon. Unfortunately, I don't travel much anymore. I use a walker these days, you see, and people at airports seem to be in such a hurry—well, that's neither here nor there. Why am I nattering on? Of course I'll send you a copy of my report. And would you mind letting me know how things turn out?"

  "What I'd really like is to come down to Juneau tomorrow and meet you, if that's possible. You could have a look at the fragments yourself; I'd appreciate your opinion."

  There was a startled pause. “You mean come here? With the bones?

  "If it's convenient."

  "Convenient? My dear man, I'd be delighted. I may be a bit rusty, you understand."

  "I'll take my chances. I don't suppose there are any photographs in the report? I thought we could try matching the new fragments against them. Maybe there are some pieces of the same bones."

  "Photographs?” Worriner laughed. “Yes, there are photographs, but I'll do better than that."

  "You mean you have casts? That's terrific. We—"

  "Gideon, I have the bones."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 14

  * * * *

  Gideon's appetite had caught up with him. He swallowed a mouthful of cold
poached salmon and mayonnaise, followed it with a hearty helping of coleslaw and half a small boiled potato, and bit into a sourdough roll. Then he pulled over a nearby chair, propped his feet on it, fixed the plate more firmly on his lap, and settled down to serious eating.

  On the other side of the small table, in much the same posture, John, whose appetite never needed to do any catching up, was working on his own heaped plate. They had brought their food from the buffet to John's room, preferring to keep their distance from the members of Tremaine's party, who were at lunch in the dining room.

  "Food's good here,” John said. On his plate were three pieces of fried chicken, two wedges of salami pizza, and a jelly donut.

  "You know Marti's going to ask me if you ate lots of monounsaturates and complex carbohydrates,” Gideon said. “And fiber. What am I supposed to tell her?"

  John's wife Marti attacked the hopeless task of reforming her husband's eating habits with a resolute affability that was remarkable in the face of continual defeat. For his part, John resisted with equal good humor.

  "Tell her I did,” he said around a mouthful of pizza. “It'll make her feel good.” He washed it down with a swig of Sprite. “So what do you think, Doc? Do scientists really go around knocking each other off over who got which idea first?” He had just finished telling Gideon about his sessions with Walter Judd and Anna Henckel.

  Gideon swallowed some grapefruit juice while he thought about it. “When I was within a couple of months of finishing my dissertation, I heard that somebody at the University of Chicago was doing one on the same subject. Believe me, if it'd been true, and if murder had been the only way to keep him from coming out with it first—well, I wouldn't have wanted to put any money on his survival chances."

  "Come on, seriously."

  Gideon eased the edge of his fork through some more of the pale, tender salmon. “I don't know, John. I don't know anything about Henckel, but, generally speaking, scientists take those things pretty seriously."

  "Like Darwin and Wallace,” John said knowingly.

  Gideon looked at him, impressed. “Yes. But I can't see her waiting all this time."

  John shrugged. “Well, maybe seeing him again brought it all back. I think she had a thing for him, you know? Something she wouldn't even admit to herself. A person's judgment gets screwed up when that happens."

  "Maybe,” Gideon said. “Do you actually believe this, or are you just throwing around ideas?"

  "Just throwing around ideas. Our boy Judd's got a pretty good motive too. Did you know he is up for some high mucky-muck state job? An appointment by the governor?"

  Gideon shook his head.

  "Well, he is. Imagine if all this stuff got raked up in Tremaine's book. First the guy messes up his work so bad they have to go out and do it over again. Then he sits around nursing a mosquito bite, for Christ's sake, while they're all getting creamed in an avalanche—which they wouldn't be, if not for his screw-up—and he doesn't even try to help them."

  "You think the governor might think twice about appointing him?"

  "I know if I was Judd I'd be worrying about it.” He began shifting things on the table, looking for something. “Damn, didn't I get any ketchup?"

  "For pizza?"

  "What, are you kidding me? For the chicken. Ah,” he said, and tore open a packet that had been under the edge of his tray. He made a puddle of it on the rim of his plate, stuck in a piece of chicken thigh, and heartily bit in. “Two interviews, two suspects,” he mused, chewing. “By the time I talk to the other three I'll probably have five."

  Gideon nodded. “It just about has to be one of the people he was meeting with, doesn't it? No one else here had any connection with him. That we know of,” he said as an afterthought.

  "Yeah. Of course it's possible someone came in from the outside, did it, and took off again, but pretty unlikely. They'd have had to come by plane, either to Gustavus or straight to Bartlett Cove by seaplane. Pretty hard to do that without being noticed."

  "And pretty hard to wander inconspicuously around the lodge looking for Tremaine's room when there are only a few guests and everybody knows everybody else by sight."

  "That's right. I got initial statements from all of them, you know. Nobody saw any strangers. Nobody saw any anybodies. They all had dinner together—expecting Tremaine, who never showed—and then around seven they started going to their rooms. So they said. Shirley Yount read in front of the fire till eight-thirty, then she went to her room too. Nobody came out again till this morning."

  "Well, one person did."

  "True."

  They addressed their food for a while, looking out the window at a forest of young alder and hemlock, A couple of the turkey-sized, speckled birds that hung around the woods meandered vacantly among the trees. Blue grouse, Julie had said they were. The day had gotten so gloomy the, lights were on in the room.

  "Doesn't the sun ever shine around here?” John said.

  Gideon laughed. “You've only been here four hours."

  "It's as bad as Seattle,” John muttered, swabbing up a glob of ketchup with a thickly battered, unidentifiable piece of chicken (assuming there was any chicken under the deep-fried coating). He chewed with placid enjoyment, his muscular jaws working slowly. “They're sending out another agent to work with me. He'll be out on today's plane. Julian Minor. Remember him?"

  "Wasn't he with you on the Lake Quinault killings?"

  "That's the one."

  Gideon recalled a middle-aged black man, competent and methodical, with rimless glasses, neat, grizzled hair, and the chubby, tidy, pin-striped appearance of a contented tax accountant. And a prim, anachronistic vocabulary straight out of the age of celluloid collars: “Be that as it may...” “I take your point...” “Thus and so..."

  "I remember him,” Gideon said.

  "Well, he sure remembers you."

  "Did he ever forgive me?"

  "What's to forgive? Just because you left him cooking a putrid piece of cadaver in a pot on a stove for three hours?"

  "Two hours,” Gideon said.

  Other than that, John's description was accurate. A rotting human hip joint had been found in a river, and Gideon had had to boil the shreds of flesh off the bones with an antiformin and sodium-hydroxide solution. But he'd had to go somewhere, and somehow poor Julian Minor, with his white shirt cuffs folded neatly back, had gotten stuck with the task of periodically stirring the greasy mess with a long wooden spoon. Like a witch in Macbeth. He had given Gideon a lot of room after that.

  "Well, there won't be any cooking chores this time,” Gideon said. “Did the people from the crime lab finish up?"

  "Oh, yeah, they're gone. So's the body. Dr. Wu too. You want to guess what they looked for and didn't find?"

  "Fingerprints?” Gideon said after a moment.

  "Good guess. Oh, there were plenty of latents on the walls and towel racks and stuff; they probably go back weeks."

  "Years."

  "Fingerprints don't last years. Didn't you know that?” Gideon glowered at him.

  "Anyhow,” John said cheerfully, “the front doorknob was wiped off—nothing on it but the maid's prints—and the handle on the closet, and Tremaine's boots, and a few other things. The killer was careful.” He finished the piece of chicken and wiped his fingers with a napkin. “Guess what else they didn't find."

  Gideon shook his head. “I have no idea."

  "Tremaine's book,” John said. “The manuscript."

  Gideon put down the piece of roll he was buttering. “Maybe he kept it in the hotel safe."

  "Nope, “I checked."

  "Well, there must be other copies somewhere, John. He wouldn't have just one. Maybe he left one at home. Maybe his publisher has a draft."

  "No good.” John told him about two telephone calls he'd made to Los Angeles. He'd spoken to Valerie Kaufman, Tremaine's editor at Javelin Press, and to Talia Lundquist, his agent. Both said they didn't have copies of the manuscript and hadn't ever seen it
. More than that, neither of them knew exactly what was in it.

  John shook his head. “Do you buy that? Javelin was paying him half a million bucks without knowing what the book was about?"

  "I don't think it's that unusual, John, especially with a celebrity author."

  "You're kidding. Is that the way it is when you write something?"

  Gideon laughed. Having published one extremely esoteric graduate textbook and several dozen scholarly articles and monographs, he knew little about half-million-dollar advances. Or any other kind of advances.

  "Not in my kind of writing,” he said. “The American Journal of Physical Anthropology lures its contributors with glory, not gold. And I have to send in detailed abstracts first. But I'd think someone like Tremaine would be in a different league. Anything he wrote would be as near to a guaranteed best-seller as you could come."

  "Yeah. Well, Javelin knows it's about the expedition and that there's some sensational stuff that hasn't ever come out before.” He took out his notebook and flipped it open. “'Dissension and jealousy among crew, open conflict...'” He glanced up. “'...and murder.’”

  Gideon put down his fork. “Murder? So they do know—"

  John shook his head. “All they know is that there was a murder. That was all he told them."

  Not who had been murdered, or by whom, or how, or why. Those little matters he'd preferred to keep to himself. But it had been enough for Javelin. Now, of course, with Tremaine dead—sensationally dead—they were desperate for a copy themselves.

  "There has to be one somewhere,” Gideon said. “I can't believe he wouldn't have a backup copy."

  "If he did, no one's seen it. From what I hear he was a little paranoid about copies."

  There was an agitated barrage of knocks on the door. “Inspector! Inspector!"

  John looked at Gideon. “Jesus, what now?"

  "It sounds like Elliott Fisk,” Gideon said.

  It was. “I want to report a crime,” the dentist blurted as John yanked the door open.

  "What happened?"

  "My diary's been stolen! Well, not my diary, my journal. Well, not my journal—"

  John stepped back from the door. “Why don't you come in and sit down, Dr. Fisk?"