Icy Clutches
Page 24
"I think it'd be better if we talked in private.” Around the room, a few other solitary members of Tremaine's group had looked up from their breakfasts to watch.
Pratt took the pipe from his mouth. He probed a cheek with his tongue. “They're warming up one of those jelly donuts for me. Kind of hate to pass that up. Why don't I look you up in ten minutes or so?"
"I'm sorry, that won't do,” Minor said.
Pratt sat up straight. His long jaw tightened. A ropy tendon stood out on either side of his throat. “Well, sir. I'm afraid it'll have to do. I don't see that I have to sit here and be, well—” He looked directly into John's eyes. “Mister, are you standing there and telling me I'm under arrest?"
"I tell you what,” John said, “why don't we just say—"
"Why don't we just say what you've got on your mind?"
John exhaled, then nodded, not at Pratt but at Owen. “All right, do it,” he said quietly.
Owen took a laminated plastic card from his shirt pocket. “James Pratt,” he said in a tight, unfamiliar voice, “you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right at this—"
"Wrong,” Pratt said.
Owen faltered.
"You people ought to get your facts straight,” Pratt said, looking from Owen, to Minor, to John. “James Pratt's been dead for thirty years. My name's Gerald Pratt. Gerald Harley Pratt."
John waited for what seemed like a long time before answering.
"No,” he said, “I don't think so."
* * * *
They had finally gotten out to sit on the end of the pier; to lie, rather, looking up at the thin, luminous cloud sheet, Julie directly on the planks, Gideon with his head propped on her belly.
"I understand,” Julie said lazily, her fingers in his hair, “about deltoid tuberosities and waitresses. I understand that you and Worriner misidentified that humerus as male when it was actually Jocelyn's. What I don't understand is how you get from there to Pratt's being guilty."
Gideon covered a relaxed yawn with his hand. The effects of the aspirin were well along and, even with the cloud layer, enough sunlight was getting through to put a comfortable glow on his forehead. “Well, I just started wondering if it was simply a matter of chance that we never found any of James Pratt's bones—or if maybe he hadn't been killed after all."
"Hey—” Julie said.
"Which started me thinking about Gerald Pratt. Wasn't it conceivable—barely—that Gerald Pratt wasn't Gerald Pratt?"
"Hey—"
"That he was really James Pratt? After thirty years, with his hair thinning, and his nose broken, and a mustache, who was going to recognize him? He was claiming to be James's brother, after all, so it'd be perfectly natural for them to look a lot alike."
"Hey, wait a minute!” She sat up. His head, so tenderly looked after a few minutes ago, bounced from her abdomen to her lap. “That's my theory."
"Your theory?” Squinting against the bright gray sky, he peered innocently up at her face. “What do you mean, your theory? You thought it was Shirley."
"I know, but you just took my theory and—and applied it to Gerald. I was the one who thought it was funny that we only had bones from two people. I was the one who—"
Laughing, he reached up to grab one of her gesticulating hands. “Of course it's your theory, Julie. I realized you were on to something the minute you brought it up. It just needed—"
"You did not. You told me it wouldn't fly, and then you changed the subject. To my infraclavicular fossae."
"Well, who could blame me for that? But on sober reflection I came around. You had it figured out long ago. You just had the wrong person.” He smiled. “One of those little details."
"Well, I was sure doing better than anyone else,” she said spiritedly. “In case you forget, I was also the one who pointed out—to universal derision—that Tremaine didn't actually see James Pratt killed, and for all we knew he was still alive. At which point I was sneeringly encouraged to leave it to the pros. Or am I remembering it wrong?"
"No,” Gideon said ruefully, “you're remembering right. Had we but known."
There was a thin, fluttery buzzing in the southeast. They looked up to see a pontooned airplane dropping out of the cloud sheet over Icy Strait and making for Bartlett Cove. It looked like the same cheerful blue-and-white Cessna that had brought Dr. Wu and taken away Tremaine's body. This time it had come for Pratt, who was going to be turned over to the state for prosecution.
"Anyway,” Gideon went on, as she settled back on her elbows, “I realized that if this guy really was James Pratt, it gave him a reason for getting rid of the femur. He didn't know I'd already sexed it, and he didn't want me to find out it was Jocelyn's."
"Why not? If—wait a minute, how could he possibly know it was female?” She cocked her head at him. “As I recall, you were raising the same objection when I was suggesting this, all of two hours ago."
"Yeah, but I forgot about one thing: I pretty much told him myself. When I met with Tremaine's group last Tuesday I told them the right femur they'd brought back from Tirku was male. Pratt knew it had to be Fisk's, because it damn sure couldn't have been his. Now we come up with another right femur. He'd know right away—and only he would know—that it was Jocelyn's, because who else was there?"
"Okay, I see that. Now go back for a minute. Why should he care whether you found out it was Jocelyn's? I mean, nobody aside from me ever doubted that she was dead in the first place. What was he worried about?"
"I guess he was worried about us putting it all together, which is just what we did. See, before this, only one person had been positively ID'd, and that was Steven Fisk. But now, with a female femur in hand, we'd have to know we had Jocelyn Yount too. That leaves only one person not positively dead: James Pratt. And that made him nervous. He didn't want people thinking too much about that."
"So he gets rid of the femur before it's sexed,” Julie murmured, “or, rather, before he thinks it's been sexed.” She lay slowly back down, her fingers laced behind her neck, Gideon resettled his head on her belly.
"Not only sexed,” he said. “At the press conference Arthur very helpfully announced to the world that he was giving me a scale that would allow me to determine which bones belonged to whom, which Pratt couldn't have been too happy with, because none of them were going to belong to James."
"Obviously."
"Obviously to Pratt. He didn't want it to be so obvious to John."
"Now that I think about it,” Julie said, “Arthur also told everyone where the bones were—at the contact station."
"The dark, isolated, unguarded contact station, yes. Pratt really wasn't taking much of a risk going there, you know. It was just luck that I came back when he was there."
"Yes, you've always been lucky that way,” she said dryly. The little airplane was already on its way back out. They both sat, arms around their knees, and watched it skim over the water, pick up speed, and finally lift off, beelike, to quickly disappear against the flat sky. Nearer, only a few yards away, a line of small, stubby-winged birds shot over the surface of the water like so many black bullets in pursuit of it.
"Pigeon guillemots,” Julie said absently. “Gideon, why did Pratt have to kill Tremaine? Why did he steal the manuscript? What difference did it make if—"
Gideon held up his hands. “Hey, lady, all I know is bones. Ask John about the rest."
"And—now wait a minute, how did he get off the glacier?” She turned to him, eyes narrowed. “When it was my theory we were talking about, you said it was impossible. And where has he been all these years? And—"
"Bones,” Gideon said. “That's all I know."
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Chapter 24
* * * *
John prodded the gelatinous cube tentatively with his fork. “What is it?"
"Tofu lasagna,” his wife said patiently.
"Why is it green?"
He continued his unenthusiastic probing. “Do I like it?"
"You love it. Trust me."
"I don't know, Marti..."
"Mellow out, babe,” said Marti, who was sometimes given to this kind of locution. “Give it a try."
John looked skeptically at her, used his fork to cut an almost invisible wedge, and put it cautiously in his mouth.
"Not bad,” he admitted.
"Of course not,” she said, pleased. Marti Lau was a loose-limbed Chicagoan (nee Marsha Goldenberg), good-looking in a long, big-jointed way; candid, flip, and perpetually happy. “You know,” she said to Gideon and Julie, “he only thinks he's a junk-food freak. Actually, he likes anything once he tries it. The guy's a human garbage disposal."
"I wouldn't argue with that,” Gideon said.
They were in the Laus’ Queen Anne Hill apartment, the first time they had gotten together since Glacier Bay, ten days earlier.
"What was the question again?” John said as they all made their way dutifully through Marti's cheeseless, meatless version of lasagna.
"How he got off the glacier,” Julie said.
"Oh, yeah. Easy, he thumbed a ride,"
Gideon glanced up from his plate. “Come on."
"Really. Look, Glacier Bay had tour boats in the summer in those days too; out of Gustavus, out of Juneau. And if you were going backpacking or kayaking, they'd let you off along the way. They still do. They'd also stop to pick you up if you got out where they could see you and you waved ‘em down.” No longer doubtful about the lasagna, he helped himself to seconds. “Which is what Pratt did. Simple."
Through the rest of the dinner he explained the reasoning that had led him to Pratt, an entirely different path than Gideon had taken. There had been several questions nagging at him. Why, for instance, had Pratt agreed to come? Tremaine's manuscript didn't seem to mean a damn to him, and his attendance was costing him a week's fishing. And why, really, was he there instead of his sister, who had been the one approached by Javelin Press? And why, when it came to that, had Javelin approached his sister and not him in the first place?
The last question was taken care of first: Javelin hadn't known about his existence until his sister had turned down their invitation and suggested her brother Gerald attend in her place. A telephone call by John to Pratt's sister Eunice in Boise had produced vague, edgy, evasive answers. These in turn prompted some more of Minor's meticulous research, from which it was learned that Gerald Hanley Pratt had been born in Sitka on March 19, 1936, that he had brown hair and brown eyes, and that he weighed seven pounds at birth.
And that he had died of congenital cyanotic heart disease in Spokane on November 26, 1936, at the age of eight months.
From there it had been simple for them to piece together what must have happened in 1960. Like Tremaine, James Pratt had survived the avalanche. Unlike Tremaine, the life he had to go back to held little appeal: Sea Resources, his cholesterol-reduction scheme, was in deep and inextricable trouble with creditors, investors, and the law. Even worse, he feared, as soon as Tremaine told what had happened on Tirku, a warrant would go out for his arrest on a charge of murder, or manslaughter at the least.
Once out of Glacier Bay he had holed up in Juneau to nurse his injuries. There he had read that he had been killed in the avalanche, along with Steven and Jocelyn, and had decided, understandably enough, that he was better off staying that way.
Fortunately for him, there was another identity waiting to be slipped into. The following week a man identifying himself as Gerald Hanley Pratt filed a request for a copy of his birth certificate at the Sitka City Hall. The required information was neatly and accurately filled out, and the request was routinely granted. With the birth certificate in hand, a driver's license and Social Security card were not hard to get, and early in 1961 “Gerald Hanley Pratt” took up residence in Ketchikan, purchased a boat, and joined the fishing fleet. Taciturn, solitary, unsociable, he fit right in.
There he had stayed until he received a worried telephone call from his sister Eunice, his one confidante. Tremaine, silent all these years, was writing a book about the Tirku survey, and God knew what he was going to say.
Pratt had to know too, of course. Was the ancient murder finally going to come to light? It had been thirty years, and Tremaine had been badly hurt, in a coma. Would he even remember it? Equally to the point, what did he remember, what had he seen—what would he write—of what had happened to Pratt after the avalanche struck? Would the official version be that he had been killed in the cataclysm, that the matter was closed? Or would it leave the reader with the idea that he might still be alive, still be within the law's reach? There was, after all, no statute of limitations on murder in Alaska.
"So we started thinking,” John said. “What if Pratt's story about hearing Tremaine's voice through the wall was a smokescreen? Maybe he'd been listening until he heard Tremaine's shower go on, not off, and maybe that was when he used that key to get into the room and hunt around for the manuscript."
"Is that the way it happened?” Gideon asked.
"Looks like it. According to him, he got spooked when he heard you found out about Fisk's murder. He stole the key from the laundry cart, waited till he heard the shower go on, and snuck in."
"How do you know all this?” Julie asked. “Has he confessed?"
"No, but there's probably some plea bargaining in the works, and they filled me in on where he's coming from.” He shrugged. “I think he's telling the truth."
"Plea bargaining!” Marti exploded. “For a double murder? What kind of rat piddle is that supposed to be?"
"Well, if you believe what he says, there wasn't any premeditation either time. As far as Fisk's murder goes, the manuscript backs him up on that. They might even go for self-defense there. And murder-two on Tremaine."
"Second-degree murder?” Julie said.
"Right. According to Pratt, he was poking around, see, looking for the manuscript, when Tremaine surprised him. Then there's this big confrontation, with Pratt trying to talk his way out of it. But after a couple of minutes this weird expression comes on Tremaine's face, and he points his finger and says, ‘Why, I know you. You're James Pratt.’”
John swallowed the last of his lasagna, shoved his plate away, and sipped from his glass of white wine. “Well, Pratt panicked. He started to threaten Tremaine, and then to shove him a little. To scare him, he says. But Tremaine kept getting more excited. And then—"
"Let me guess,” Marti said. “He blacks out. He can't remember what happened next."
"That's it,” John said genially. “He blacked out, came to with Tremaine dead, really panicked, and set up the fake suicide."
"Sounds like first-degree murder to me,” Marti grumbled.
"Marti, things'll get sorted out. Don't you have any faith in the American system of jurisprudence?"
"Ho,” Marti said. “Does anybody want some more lasagna?"
"What happened to the manuscript?” Julie asked.
He threw it in the lake, he says. I guess he was hoping it really was the only copy, the way Tremaine said. And the bones got tossed in the woods. What's for dessert, babe?"
"Tofutti,” announced Marti, who took a thematic approach to dinners. “You love it."
John looked pained. “How about walking down to the Pacific Dessert Company for something?"
"Chocolate Decadence?” Julie murmured plaintively.
"Fine with me,” Marti said, unoffended, “but it's gonna be guilt burgers in the morning."
"I'll risk it,” John said.
"I wonder what will happen to Tremaine's book now,” Julie said as they got into their jackets.
John had the answer to that too. “It'll get published. Javelin's asked Anna Henckel to finish it up. Do a foreword in her own name, expand the scientific stuff, edit the whole thing."
"Anna Henckel?” Julie said. “But I thought she hated him. She'll destroy him."
> "No,” John said slowly, “I think she'll do just fine."
They were sitting over their coffee and dessert in the big, bright pastry restaurant at the base of the hill when Gideon raised something else.
"John, how could you make all those assumptions about Pratt not being dead, when I kept telling you we had bones from both men?"
"Yeah, well...” John said with a grin. “No offense, Doc, but I don't always believe everything you tell me."
Gideon smiled. “A good thing, too,” he said.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * * *
Gideon Oliver has always relied on the kindness of his real-life counterparts. For Icy Clutches, particular thanks are due to several practicing forensic anthropologists. First, it was Dr. Michael Charney, Director of Colorado State University's Forensic Science Laboratory, who gave me the focal idea for the plot over a friendly cup of coffee one morning.
Later, others cordially and generously filled in gaps in my knowledge with their own formidable expertise, viz: Peggy Caldwell of Rutgers University and the New York City Medical Examiner's Office; Dr. Rodger Heglar, Consultant in forensic anthropology, San Diego, and Professor Emeritus, San Francisco State University; Dr. Ted Rathbun, Chairman of the Anthropology Department, University of South Carolina; and Dr. Ed Waldrip, Director of the Southern Institute for Forensic Science, New Orleans.
David W. Spines, Chief Ranger, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, was equally generous with his time and considerable knowledge.
Glacier Bay Lodge, where much of the story's action occurs, is a real place, and is as described. My thanks go to owner Bob Giersdorf for his permission to use this remote and romantic hotel as a setting for some fictional foul play.
* * *
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