A Night Too Dark

by Dana Stabenow

  “There isn’t another trooper assigned to Niniltna,” Kate said. “I am a licensed private investigator. The state frequently hires me to assist the troopers in those cases that might not be, shall we say, front burner.”

  “Oh,” Truax said after a beat. “I see.” He exchanged another glance with Haynes, and then rose to his feet and went around to sit at his desk.

  Kate appreciated the signal. She even got up and moved the chair in which he had been sitting to one side and readjusted her own chair so that they could see eye to eye across his desk. Mutt reacquired her spot at Kate’s right hand, maintaining her Muttly sang-froid. Haynes was wearing a poker face, she might have been alarmed, aghast, amused, or all three at Kate’s effrontery. She exchanged a glance with Truax, and there was a quality of intimacy there that made Kate wonder at the closeness of their association. It could be merely that they were longtime coworkers. Which would not necessarily preclude a romantic relationship. She looked from one to the other from beneath lowered lids. Truax was wearing a wedding ring. Haynes was not.

  “About Mr. Gammons,” Kate said. “He does work here?”

  “He does,” Truax said. “Or he did.”

  “Did?”

  “He hasn’t shown up for work in, hell, a month?” Truax buzzed his intercom. “Lyda?”

  “Yes, Vern?”

  “Bring up Dewayne Gammons’s personnel file, would you?”

  A brief pause.

  “Lyda? Did you get that? Root out Dewayne Gammons’s personnel file and bring it up to my office pronto.”

  “Right away, Vern,” Lyda said.

  Her voice over the speaker sounded different this time, hesitant, maybe even a little fearful? A few moments later the dark, plump young woman appeared in Truax’s doorway, manila file folder in hand. Kate watched her as she walked across the room and wondered if she was always that pale.

  “Kate, this is Lyda Blue, everybody’s right hand around here. She and I have worked a couple of Global digs together. Lyda, this is Kate Shugak, the chair of the board of the Niniltna Native Association and someone to whom we want to give every facility, you understand?”

  Lyda gave Kate a long, unsmiling glance. “Yes, Vern.”

  “Lyda is from Bering,” Vern said, like he was expecting Kate to pin a medal on him for hiring local. He took the folder from Lyda and gave it to Kate without looking at it.

  She accepted it without opening it. “You say Mr. Gammons hasn’t shown up for work in how long?”

  Vern looked at Lyda. Lyda said, “Almost a month.” She nodded at the file. “It’s all in there. Date hired, last day on the clock, date terminated.”

  “Did you know him, Ms. Blue?” Kate said.

  “I know all the employees at Suulutaq, Ms. Shugak.”

  “Did you know Mr. Gammons well?”

  “No better than any of the other employees.”

  Kate wasn’t so sure. She’d caught a glimpse of an almost imperceptible falter in the bland smile, but she wasn’t going to pursue it here, in front of Lyda’s employers. “Thank you, Ms. Blue.”

  “Thanks, Lyda,” Truax said. He waited until the door closed behind her, and looked at Kate.

  “Sergeant Chopin will have told you that Gammons’s truck has been found about halfway between Niniltna and Park headquarters,” Kate said. “And that a search party found a body not far from there.”

  Truax tried to look concerned. “Is it Gammons?”

  “Sergeant Chopin has sent the body to the medical examiner in Anchorage for identification.”

  “How did he die?” Haynes said, speaking for the first time.

  “Again, details will have to wait on the findings of the medical examiner.” Kate opened the file and gave the contents a brief glance. She looked up and said, “I see he worked in Stores. Would it be possible for me to talk to his coworkers?”

  “Certainly,” Truax said. “But didn’t you say you had questions about two of our employees, Kate?”

  “I did,” Kate said, and this time allowed her face to relax into a rueful smile. “The second case isn’t quite so, ah, grim. Evidently, one of your employees has married into the Park.”

  Truax smiled in return. It was a rather attractive smile when he wasn’t forcing it, good teeth, hints of dimples on both sides, and it reached his eyes. “Nothing I can do about that, Kate. I make it a policy never to interfere in the private lives of people who work for me, so long as their private lives don’t interfere with their work. Can’t say I object to Suulutaq workers forging closer ties with NNA shareholders and people who live in the Park, either.”

  “Twice,” Kate said.

  “I’m sorry?” Truax said.

  “He married into the Park twice,” Kate said. “Twice within the last five months.”

  There was a pause. “I’m guessing,” Truax said, “that the second time was without benefit of divorce from the first wife?”

  “It was,” Kate said.

  Truax sighed and looked at the ceiling for inspiration. “Well, Kate, you want me to fire him? Wait a minute, before I fire anyone, who is it?”

  “Randy Randolph.”

  “Randy Randolph?” Haynes said.

  “Yes,” Kate said.

  “Randy Randolph?” Truax said, sitting straight up in his chair. “My baker?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Kate said.

  Truax was incredulous and not afraid to show it. “Randy Randolph married twice over the last five months? Are you sure?”

  “It’s who you are writing the paycheck in question to,” Kate said. “What’s the problem?”

  “No problem,” Truax said, “it’s just—” There was a look of restrained hilarity on his face that made Kate curious and a little wary. Haynes, too, looked amused. He leaned over the intercom again. “Lyda, is Randy Randolph on shift yet?”

  It took her a few moments, probably to look up the work schedule. “Yes, Vern.”

  “Thanks.” Truax leaned back. “Holly, would you like to take Ms. Shugak around?”

  Kate rose to her feet. “I appreciate that, but there’s no need. It’s not that big a camp. I’m sure I can find my way.”

  Truax’s alarm at the prospect of Kate Shugak, Ace Detective, wandering around his mine without a keeper warred with his desire to assure Kate Shugak, chair of the board of directors of the Niniltna Native Association, that Global Harvest Resources Inc. had absolutely nothing to hide at the Suulutaq Mine. It took him a moment to reconcile these two viewpoints, during which Kate and Mutt had slipped out the door.

  Six

  Lyda was back at her desk. “Vern asked if you would show me around the mine, Ms. Blue,” Kate said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  Mendacity was just one more service Kate offered. And she wanted to create an opportunity to speak with Lyda Blue alone.

  Mutt’s head popped over the top of the desk. She and Lyda examined each other again. “Wolf?” Lyda said.

  “Half,” Kate said.

  Neither was unconscious of conversations dying natural deaths all around the large room as people took in the couple standing in front of reception. Everyone thought Mutt outweighed Kate, and everyone was right. Everyone worried over the possibility that Kate didn’t control Mutt, and everyone was wrong. Mostly. Everyone was also acquiring a line of sight to the nearest window or door in the event of any emergency of a lupine kind.

  Lyda nodded, unsurprised and unalarmed. If she really was from Bering, she wouldn’t be either. “Vern is my boss, Ms. Shugak. What he says goes. What would you like to see first?”

  “Are Dewayne Gammons’s belongings still here at the mine?”

  Lyda Blue hesitated for a moment too long, and knew it. “Yes,” she said. “I—we didn’t know where he’d gone, and he didn’t fill in the next-of-kin blank on his employee form so we didn’t have anyone to send them to. I didn’t want to just throw them out.”

  “May I see them, please?”

  Lyda Blue led her to one of the modular bunk
houses, the equivalent of a wide, single-story trailer with rooms on both sides, a communal bathroom at one end, and a TV lounge at the other. Lyda opened the door to a room next to the lounge, which was cleared of furniture to do duty for storage. It was about three-quarters full of haphazardly stacked cleaning supplies. Tucked next to a crooked tower of forty-eight-roll packages of toilet paper was a large six-shelf unit made of heavy, chrome-plated steel, bolted together by an inexpert hand that had left all the shelves enough out of true to be noticeable but not enough to have everything on them on the floor unless the next earthquake was a big one. The shelves were jammed with what looked like personal gear, duffels, stuff sacks, daypacks, a couple of suitcases. “This is all Gammons’s stuff?” Kate said.

  “No. Only this.” Lyda pulled down a canvas duffel and an Eddie Bauer daypack without checking the tags.

  “This all?” A nod. Kate looked back at the shelves. “Who does the rest of it belong to?”

  “Wayne Gammons isn’t the only employee to walk off the job at Suulutaq, Ms. Shugak,” Lyda said.

  “You haven’t been in business out here for even a year,” Kate said.

  “Some guys don’t last a week,” Lyda said. “Maybe they miss their wives or their girlfriends. Maybe they don’t like the isolation. Maybe they don’t like the no drugs or booze policy. Maybe they’re just pissed off they have to share the remote in the TV room.”

  “You’d think hauling their stuff out with them wouldn’t take that much extra effort.”

  “They know they’re coming out to the back of beyond when they take the job, and that they’ll be bunking in with a bunch of strangers. Chances are they’ve been on jobs like this before and they’re aware of what sometimes happens to personal possessions in communal living, so it’s not like they’ve brought their most treasured belongings with them in the first place. They know Vern is going to be angry at wasting employee orientation and training on them. They’re probably afraid that if they say they’re quitting he’ll make them walk back to Anchorage. So they leave their stuff so as not to draw attention that their last plane ride is one-way.” Lyda looked down at the bags. “What do you want to do with these?”

  “Is there somewhere we can take them so I can look at what’s in them? A table would be good.”

  Still silent, Lyda Blue led her to a small vacant office at the back of the main office building, furnished only with a rectangular folding table. There was no window and the only light was a single fluorescent tube dangling from a wire in the center of the ceiling, to the imminent danger of anyone walking beneath it. The room was cold, too, and on the wall next to the door Kate spotted a bundle of wires where a thermostat might one day go. Mutt cast a disparaging eye around the space and took a seat next to the door. It was warmer outside.

  Kate moved the table so that the dangling fluorescent tube hung over it and heaved the bags up. Lyda Blue lingered by the door. “Is there anything else?”

  “There will be,” Kate said, “but in the meantime why don’t you help me unpack his bags. Don’t close the door.”

  Lyda, who had been about to do so, said, “Why not?”

  “She won’t like it.”

  Lyda looked down at Mutt, who was watching her with a narrow yellow stare.

  “Just leave it open a crack. You packed these bags, didn’t you?”

  “How did you know that?”

  Kate shrugged. “Just a guess. You seem to be Vern’s first call for everything.”

  Lyda hesitated for a moment longer, and then came to stand across the table. Kate didn’t look up, pulling at the strap on the duffel and spreading its contents across the table. Three pairs of jeans, half a dozen shirts, jockey shorts, long underwear, wool socks, all well worn but nothing in rags. A pair of flip-flops. An electric razor, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a tube of generic shampoo, a stick of equally generic deodorant, a can of shaving cream. “How well did you know Dewayne Gammons, Lyda?”

  Lyda’s eyes widened. In the harsh light of the single bulb her face looked leached of all color.

  In the daypack was an envelope filled with pay stubs, a checkbook with an account at the Last Frontier Bank in Ahtna showing fourteen grand to the good, and a book. Kate read the title out loud. “The Portable Nietz sche?” She put the book down. “At least he read.” She looked up.

  A tear had traced its way down Lyda Blue’s cheek. “He does read,” she said. “You don’t know for sure yet whose body that was.”

  “No,” Kate said, her voice as gentle as the scar on her throat would allow. “I don’t. How well did you know him, Lyda?”

  “How did you know?”

  “You called him Wayne,” Kate said.

  Lyda reached up to touch her cheek and seemed surprised to find the tear. She wiped it away, not bothering much about her mascara. “I—we met when he was first hired. He drove up from Washington State with some of the other guys looking for work. He told me they’d heard the news about Global Harvest hiring and decided to share expenses on the trip north.”

  “Who came with him?”

  Lyda shrugged. “I remember one of them quit before Wayne did. I don’t remember his name. I can probably look it up for you.” She bit her lip. If the body was Dewayne Gammons, he hadn’t quit. Lyda raised her chin and made an obvious effort to keep her voice steady. “Everybody’s hired through the office in Anchorage and they go through their orientation there, but I process all the paperwork, get them set up with their payroll taxes and stuff, give them their room assignments, so I’m usually the first person at the mine all the employees meet. And then, you know, we all eat together in the mess hall, and play pool or foosball together in one of the lounges. We’re just starting up here, so it’s only week on, week off, and we’re still in the early stages of exploration so the crew is still small. People tend to make friends fast.”

  “So you and Wayne made friends.”

  Lyda nodded, sniffled, and pulled a Kleenex from her pocket. She hunted in vain for a clean spot and settled for one grubby corner that nearly disintegrated under the onslaught. “He saw that I was Native, and he was curious.” She looked at Kate. “You know. In a nice way.”

  “I know,” Kate said. “Were you more than friends?”

  Lyda shook her head. “No. We hadn’t even met off the site.”

  The “yet” was unspoken but implied.

  Kate hesitated. “What was his attitude before he disappeared? Was he happy? Sad? Frightened? Excited?”

  Lyda looked around for a trash can, didn’t find one, and pocketed the very used Kleenex instead. “He told me he suffered from depression.”

  “Did he say he’d been diagnosed? Did he mention a doctor?”

  “He didn’t believe in doctors,” Lyda said. “And he would never have checked himself into a hospital. He said that’s where people go to die, and that when he died he wanted to be outside, in the fresh air.”

  Kate pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it, and handed it to Lyda. “That’s a copy of the note that was found taped to the wheel of Wayne’s pickup.”

  Lyda read it. It took her a lot longer than it should have, as if she was reading it over and over again.

  “Is that Wayne’s handwriting, Lyda?”

  “I—I don’t know. It’s just printing, isn’t it. Anybody could have written that.” Her hand dropped and she stared over Kate’s shoulder with blank eyes, the note fluttering to the floor.

  Kate stooped to pick it up. “Did he have any other friends here in camp?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “You remember any of the other guys he drove up with?”

  Lyda shrugged. It wasn’t an answer but Kate let it pass for now. “Any other friends?”

  “Maybe the people he worked with. On jobs like this people who work in the same department tend to hang out together, eat meals together, watch TV together. He didn’t talk about anyone in particular.” She sighed. “But then it was like pulling teeth to get him to talk about himself anyway. He
wanted to know about me.” Her lip trembled. “First time I ever met a guy who asked me questions about myself, and actually listened to the answers. You know?”

  Kate was a woman. She knew.

  “The thing is, he seemed to be cheering up a little, the longer he was here. At first he wouldn’t talk at all about the future, but lately we’d been talking about traveling somewhere together on our week off. Seattle, maybe, or Hawaii.”

  Kate frowned. That certainly didn’t square with the note on the steering wheel, but then suicides weren’t famous for thinking linearly. “Why did you pretend not to know him?”

  Lyda picked at a hangnail. “Pretty obvious I didn’t know him. I sure didn’t know he was going to walk out into the woods so he could lay down and die.” She glanced up at Kate. “Even the elders don’t do that anymore.”

  Kate persisted. “But you didn’t want me to know you were friends. Why not?”

  Lyda looked out the window of that stark, bare little room and sighed. “I don’t know. Before, we were just getting to know each other. A small camp like this is such a hothouse, there’s nothing to do except gossip about what everyone else is doing. I’ve made that mistake before. I didn’t want to make it again, so we didn’t spend time alone where other people could see.” She was silent for a moment. “Now, if he really did this … I don’t think I want anyone to know that I could be friends with such a—”

  “Such a what?”

  She turned her head and Kate was surprised to see the beginnings of anger in the other woman’s eyes. “Such a loser.”

  For the moment, Kate was silenced.

  They repacked the duffel and the daypack and returned them to the storage room. Lyda had recovered most of her self-possession, although now and then she would take in a deep breath, blink hard, and let it out on a long, slow exhale. “What did you want to see next, Ms. Shugak?”

  “It’s Kate, Lyda. Is it possible to see his room?”

  Lyda nodded. “It’s still empty.”

  “Empty” didn’t come close to describing it. It had been scoured clean of personality, not so much as a pinup of Britney Spears left on the walls.