Vern, looking shaken, nodded. “There are master keys for all the doors back in the office.”
“All right, let’s go there. Mutt.” She pointed. “Guard.”
Mutt sat in front of Lyda’s door, lips drawn back in a snarl at the smell of death.
In his office Vern sorted through keys on a ring, detached one, and handed it over. “Was the door locked when you got to the room?” Kate said to Haynes.
The geologist looked as if she were going to faint. Kate pushed her into a chair and shoved her head between her knees, remembering with a pang having to do the same thing for Lyda the day before. “Was the door locked when you got to the room?” she said again.
Haynes shook her head. “Open.”
Kate looked at Vern. “May I use your sat phone?”
She had to ask him how to use it. Maggie came on. “Maggie, it’s Kate. Is Jim there?”
“No, he took off somewhere with Old Sam Dementieff, I don’t—”
“I’m out at Suulutaq. Tell Jim I said he needs to get here as soon as he can.”
“Why, what’s going on?”
“There’s been a death. Tell him I said right away, and to bring his crime scene kit.” From the corner of her eye she saw Haynes sit up and look at Truax.
“What—” Maggie bit back whatever she’d been about to say. “Can’t talk?”
“Don’t want to.”
“Gotcha. Jim, head for Suulutaq ASAP, bring murder bag.”
“Thanks, Maggie.” She handed the phone to Truax.
“Crime scene kit?” Haynes said. “But—”
“But what?” Kate said.
“It’s not a crime, is it?” Haynes looked from Kate to Vern. “You saw the note, right?”
“Note?” Vern said. “What note?” He had seen the body of his executive assistant and nothing more.
Kate said, “Yes, I saw the note.”
“Well, then—”
“State law requires the investigation of all unexplained deaths,” Kate said. “While we’re waiting for Sergeant Chopin, I’d like to talk to some of the employees, the ones who knew her well, and especially the people who lived on either side of her and across the hall from her.”
“We’ll have to pull some of them off work,” Truax said, protesting.
“Then you’ll pull some off work,” Kate said.
“Maybe we’ll just wait to see what the trooper says.”
Kate’s expression lightened briefly. “Yeah. You should definitely do that.”
They had to go to Lyda’s desk. Vern turned on her computer to click through her files. “I’ll have to print out the resident list for that trailer.” He clicked and the printer hummed into action. “Holly? Round these guys up and send them over to the mess hall, okay?”
Haynes, still visibly shaken, stepped forward to take the piece of paper, and departed without a word.
Haynes assembled twenty-three people in the mess hall, and Kate spoke to them one at a time at a table in the corner, she hoped out of earshot of the rest. They’d all seen Lyda at dinner the night before. She had seemed to be her usual calm self. “She wasn’t normally a jokey kind of person to begin with,” one of them said, “but she seemed fine to me.”
That seemed to be the general consensus.
Kate went back to the kitchen to talk to Jules, who was assembling ham hocks and beans in a stainless steel pot the size of a small water tower. He was still upset, with the occasional tear dropping into the beans. His staff was giving him plenty of room.
“Jules, when I was here last time,” Kate said, “you gave Lyda a cookie.”
He nodded. “Chocolate chip. I remember. That was a good batch. She told me over the serving line at dinner the next night she really liked it.” He began to dissolve again. “You know,” he said, a sob catching in his voice, “they’re different every batch. No matter how much you stick to a recipe.”
“Jules, I need you to hold it together for me,” Kate said, her voice gentle. “I need some answers only you can give me, so I can figure out what happened to her.”
He brought out a red kerchief the size of a mainsail and blew his nose. “Anything,” he said. “Anything you need.”
“When you gave her the cookie, she asked if there were any peanuts in it.”
“Yes. She didn’t have to. I was always very careful, because of her allergy.”
“She was allergic to peanuts?”
He nodded. “I stopped ordering snack packs with peanuts in them after she told me. I even got rid of all the peanut oil, even though there’s nothing better for deep-frying chicken and French fries. But we made do.”
“You don’t have peanut anything in this kitchen?”
“Peanut butter,” he said, “and three kinds of jam, because people get cranky when they can’t have their PBJs, especially the night shift when they come in for mid-rats.”
“Do you make peanut butter cookies?”
“They’re a staple,” he said. “But they are clearly marked and the baker knows not to mix the doughs and to scour the mixing bowls and the baking sheets between batches.” Jules gulped and sniffed. “Are you saying Lyda had an allergic reaction to peanuts? That that’s what killed her?”
“We don’t know yet how she died,” Kate said. “I’m talking to everyone who knew her, getting all the details I can. It’s just routine.” She heard the engine of the Cessna pass overhead, and left Jules with more tears rolling down his plump cheeks.
She and Vern arrived on the airstrip at the same time. From the moment Jim climbed out on the strip Vern spoke to him and only to him, as if Kate no longer existed. He walked them back to Lyda’s room. Kate unlocked the door.
Jim put his kit down and opened it to extract his camera. He took several shots of the room and donned gloves before stepping inside.
“Go on back to your office,” Kate said to Truax. “We’ll come to you when we’re done.”
He didn’t like it, especially not coming from Kate, but once the door was open again he wasn’t enjoying himself so he left.
The first thing Jim did was check for a pulse. “She’s cold,” he said.
“Yeah. And rigor’s fully established.”
Jim tried to raise Lyda’s arm.
“See her face?” Kate said.
“Yeah. She was definitely having trouble breathing.” He raised a corner of the blanket.
“Diarrhea?”
“And vomiting.” He let the blanket fall again. “Are those hives?”
“Looks like it.”
“Anaphylaxis, you think?”
“She was allergic to peanuts,” Kate said. “Bag the napkin with the crumbs on it.”
“Death by what, peanut butter cookie?” Jim said. “Christ.” He bagged the napkin and the crumbs on it. He picked up the note that was sitting next to the napkin. “ ‘I’m sorry. I never should have helped. Tell Dewayne I said good-bye.’ ” Jim looked up. “ ‘Never should have helped’ what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Typed,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. She held out a bag and he slipped the note inside.
Jim took notes and more photos. “You take the desk, I’ll take the closet.”
Kate stepped over Lyda Blue’s sprawled leg and started opening drawers. There were three on the left side and a wider, shallow drawer in the desktop, the right side of which was fixed to the wall. The side drawers held toiletries, underwear, T-shirts, socks, sweaters.
Nothing unexpected or unusual. Kate pulled open the middle drawer. Pencils, pens, envelopes, stamps. A checkbook. Kate opened it. “She had about twenty-five hundred in checking, and almost ten thousand in savings.”
“Is there a statement?” Jim was patting down the clothes hanging in the closet.
“No.”
He grunted. “She might have had those sent to her home address. They’ll have it at the office. Bag it and tag it.”
Kate tried to close the middle drawer and it stuck half
way in. She tugged on it. Now it was completely stuck. She bent over to peer inside. There was a large, elongated object in the back that was catching on the bottom of the desktop. She reached inside to grab it while she jiggled the drawer.
When the drawer finally came all the way out, she was holding a leather holster in her hand. “Hey,” she said.
Jim was just closing up the closet, and looked over at her. “Well,” he said.
“Empty,” she said.
“I noticed.” He raised his head. “This morning, Old Sam and I found a .22 revolver in the clearing where you guys found the body.”
“What?”
He nodded. “ ’Fraid so.”
“Goddammit,” she said. “It’s not that big a clearing, how could I have missed it?”
“Also the skull I’m going to assume belongs to that same body.”
“Shit,” she said.
He waited.
“I should have made another sweep after I shot that bear.” She looked at him, anger warring with embarrassment on her face. “I’m sorry, Jim.”
“Facing down a charging grizzly takes pretty much all your attention,” he said, “and afterward it’s all you can do to stand upright. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Besides, I don’t know that it would have made any difference. Guy wasn’t shot, so far as we know.”
The overhead light had a very low wattage bulb. She held the holster to the window. It was a brown leather side holster, right-hand draw. Kate turned it over. “Challenger 1-C.”
“George Lawrence, leather crafter to the stars.” At her look he said, “Okay, I admit I know less than nothing about guns and gun paraphernalia, but I know that much.”
The light from the window wasn’t enough. She turned on the desk light and held the holster directly beneath it so they could see inside. “The front and rear sights have left indentations in the leather.”
“The trigger guard and the cylinder, too.”
Kate regarded the holster with a somber expression. “You think the pistol belonged to Lyda?”
Jim shook his head. “Let’s leave that up to Brillo’s boys. I’ll send it in with the pistol and the body.”
Kate bagged the holster, and the small shoulder bag Jim had found suspended from a hanger beneath a down jacket. It contained a wallet with Lyda’s driver’s license, a credit card and a debit card, a lipstick, a comb, and some peppermints.
Jim shook his head. “It’s no wonder the American economy went broke. None of the people involved in whatever the hell we’re calling this were into conspicuous consumption, that’s for damn sure. Let’s bag her and get her to town.”
A small crowd gathered to watch as the two of them brought the black body bag down the steps and set it gently into the back of the pickup that someone had backed to the door. Mutt escorted them down the stairs and gave the crowd the business end of her yellow stare. They took an instinctive giant step back. At the back of it Kate saw Johnny and Van. She knew they were working days, and realized that it must be past six o’clock.
Jim sealed the door to Lyda’s room. They left Mutt on guard and walked over to the admin building. Kate gave Johnny and Van the high sign to follow at a discreet distance.
Truax came downstairs to meet them. Haynes was not in evidence. The room was hushed, people speaking in whispers and sneaking covert glances at Jim. It wasn’t every day you saw a state trooper march into your office and take charge. It wasn’t every day, Kate thought, that these people saw Vern Truax take orders.
She was unaware of how much she and Mutt added to the respectful, uneasy, and expectant silence.
“Who lived in the rooms on either side of her?” Jim said.
“No one, they were both empty. The camp’s not anywhere near full capacity. Lyda has been … Lyda was assigning every other room where she could, to give people some privacy.”
“I found a guy who lived a couple of doors down,” Kate said. “He says he heard female voices in the hall about ten o’clock, but he didn’t recognize them. There are two other women bunking in the same trailer. Both of them were watching a movie in the TV lounge in the trailer next door, and got back about then, they think. I talked to them, and they said they didn’t see Lyda after dinner last night.”
Jim nodded. “I want to go through her desk. And we’ll need her personnel file.”
Truax opened a file drawer and tabbed through it, producing a folder and handing it over.
“Vern, you said you’d worked with her on other jobs,” Kate said as Jim opened and closed drawers in methodical fashion, tagging and bagging some of the contents, discarding others. “Do you know her family?”
Truax shook his head. “No. One of the things I liked about working with Lyda was that it was all about the job. I never had to worry that she would allow personal problems to get in the way of what we had to do every day. She was a good worker. Damn it.” He smacked the desk. “Damn it! She made this camp run. She processed new employees, she assigned rooms, she ordered supplies. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to keep to schedule without her.” He looked up. “If she was in trouble why didn’t she say something to me? She should have said something.”
She wouldn’t have, not to a boss who was so pleased that she kept it all business all the time on the job, Kate thought. She could have said it out loud but what was the point other than making Truax squirm, and that wouldn’t help. “On another topic. Since Dewayne Gammons is alive, it follows that we have to identify the body we found. Best bet is he was another of your employees. I’ve been asking around today. You had an employee, a Rick Allen, who walked off the job the same time Dewayne Gammons did. Do you remember him?”
“Rick Allen? I don’t—Wait a minute, was that Holly’s gopher?” He consulted a computer, and after a few blasphemous moments managed to locate Rick Allen’s room. Kate made Vern hand over Allen’s personnel file and declined his escort to the room. They left him staring after them with a pronounced set to his jaw.
Johnny and Van were waiting outside the doors to the admin building. “Walk with us,” Kate said, and they fell into step next to her. “Did you know Lyda Blue?”
Johnny and Van exchanged glances. “Sure. She processed all of the roustabouts from Niniltna in, helped us with the forms, introduced us to our bosses.”
“You spend any time with her?”
They both shook their heads.
“Anybody say anything about her?”
“I heard somebody say that she looked pretty friendly with the dead guy you found off the Step road.”
“Turns out he’s not so dead after all,” Kate said. “Who was it said that?”
Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know who said it. It was a bunch of guys sitting around the TV room talking about the women in camp.” He glanced at Vanessa. “When the women weren’t around. Hers wasn’t the only name mentioned.”
“Okay. Keep your heads down and your eyes open. Job okay?”
They both nodded. “It’s not make-work, we’re really doing stuff. We’re busy all the time and we’re outside a lot. It’s all good, Kate.”
“All right. Scoot.”
They headed for the mess hall and their dinners and Jim and Kate went to what had been Rick Allen’s room.
“So Rick Allen went missing the same time as Dewayne Gammons?”
“It’s not much.”
“It’s more than we had before. Let’s see what’s in his room.”
But the ever efficient Lyda Blue had long since emptied it out and they found nothing, no loose floorboards or ceiling tiles behind which Allen had concealed even so much as a secret stash of girlie magazines.
Kate found her way back to the bakery. Jim’s expression when he saw Randy Randolph for the first time reminded her that no matter how tragic and terrible life could sometimes be, sooner or later it would be leavened with a glimpse however transient of the eternal comedy.
“You’re Randy Randolph?” Jim said.
Randy nodded, looking r
esigned. “Are you arresting me, officer?”
“What? Oh. Uh, no, uh, no no, of course not.” Jim glared at Kate, who was looking preternaturally solemn, and pulled himself together. “I mean, not yet, Randy. Bigamy is a crime, a Class A misdemeanor in the state of Alaska. You’re going to need to get your personal life in some kind of order or—”
Kate saw that Jim was trying to recollect the penalties for bigamy and, ever helpful, said, “You could be fined.”
Jim turned his shoulder on her in pointed fashion. “Randy, you’ve heard about the death in camp, haven’t you?”
“Lyda Blue.” Randy nodded, his pasty face set in grave lines. “She was a nice lady. I liked her a lot.”
Jim gave Kate a look that stopped whatever she had been about to say dead in its tracks. “You knew about her peanut allergy?”
“Oh yeah. Jules made sure everyone knew about it. He had kind of a crush on her, you know.”
“Yes, we know. Is there any way that ground peanuts or peanut oil or anything made from peanuts could have gotten into something it shouldn’t have?”
Randy shook his head. “No,” he said, and he was very firm. “We haven’t used peanut oil for months. The peanut butter and jelly is on its own tray, and Jules is rabid about reading the ingredients on packaged foods before he uses them on the line.”
He pulled a tray of croissants out of the oven. They were pale gold perfection, and Kate wondered if it was perhaps his baking skills—along with the eyelashes—that were the attraction here. “Randy, you know Sergeant Chopin found another one of your wives, right?”
He looked glum. “Yeah, I heard about it.”
“She’s not happy. Neither is Suzy or Bonnie. Might maybe want to get yourself a good lawyer.”
A Night Too Dark Page 18