by James Abel
• • •
THE NARRATIVE ENDED BUT EDDIE SAID KELLEY HAD ALSO RECORDED other people. Returning to the menu, he found a file titled “BORG PEOPLE” and clicked on it. It was a log of people clearly recorded without their knowledge. I heard my neighbors’ voices—recognizable from our evenings together—but an electric shock went through me. They were the Harmons, all right, but different, sounding harsh and cruel over the computer sound system. The mild-mannered restraint that I associated with them was nowhere in the recording. This was not subtle. This was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
CATHY HARMON: The water, Ted. The fucking water. The water burns, and I will not drink it. I told you to get different water but you never fucking do anything I ask.
TED HARMON: I saw you coming out of the cabin with him. I go out with Kelley for an hour, and you two are in there!
CATHY HARMON: (laughs) Oh, you know what they say, if you don’t use it, you lose it.
TED HARMON: I smell him on you.
CATHY HARMON: I do, too. I love it.
Eddie looked up at me. “Holy shit, One. Are these the same people we know?”
I looked over at Merlin who was still and serious, staring down at the table.
“Merlin?”
“Nothing.”
“Merlin!”
A sigh. “Clay had a crush on her, Joe. He told me at the family Fourth of July dinner. He laughed over it. He never would have done anything about it. He thought she was cute.”
Eddie said, “Sounds like he did do something.”
I shook my head, feeling the rage and confusion, the lust and pain that was palpable in this room, just as present as the appalling personality changes on Kelley’s recording. “Having the urge isn’t doing it. Everyone has goddamn urges. You need something extra to lose control.”
CATHY: He can last hours, Ted. Hours. You want to go for a ride with me now? Come on, a ride. You and me. On the tundra. Like when we used to drive around. You know, blow jobs? In college?
TED: Get away from me. You disgust me.
I said, stunned for the teenager listening to this from her parents, “Write: sexual aggressiveness.”
Merlin sighed, thinking out loud. “You know what?”
“What?”
“Crystal meth. Ingested. We had a few kids on it last year. Hyperactive. Meth mouth. Delusions . . . hmm . . . And screwing like rabbits. She said the water tasted funny.”
Eddie shook his head. “You’re thinking all four of them took meth?”
“Or were given it. I’m just saying . . . I mean, it’s possible, right?”
I said, “Dr. Sengupta is running blood work this morning at the hospital. If any of them had drugs in their system we’ll know by this afternoon. The other chem-screens might take a little longer.”
Merlin pulled a chair over, and sat down. “Well, they’ve had accidents all summer. Clay thought someone was trying to sabotage that project. So if someone was doing that, but it wasn’t working . . . If someone got desperate to stop them . . . hell . . . Maybe someone showed up at the camp, landed on the lake. Float plane.”
“She didn’t say anything about a plane, Merlin. No tracks, either. No marks on the tundra if someone came down on those big balloon-tire planes. Kelley would have mentioned it, I’d think. And come to think of it, who was their pilot? Who took them out there?”
Whoever did that had access to their water.
“I think it was Jens. Yes . . . Jens.”
“Merlin, if there’s something wrong here, something they ingested, we’re not hearing the Clay you know. None of them are normal. Believe me.”
CATHY HARMON: You could take a few lessons from Clay, Ted. Mouth lessons. Tongue lessons. Fingers. How to beat your three-minute-quickie record, hmm?
I stared at Eddie’s list. I said, slowly, reasoning out loud, “You know: Funny tastes, bright light, numbness, fear of water, sexual aggressiveness. Pretty classic for rabies.”
“Are you kidding? In four people? In a cluster? You have to be bitten by an animal to get it. Four?”
“I’m not saying it is that. I’m just linking symptoms. But you’re right. One person could be bitten. Not four.”
“It’s not rabies.”
“I know.” I sighed. “Still, I’ll ask Sengupta if he found bite marks.”
“What’s in their stomachs?” Merlin said.
The next two recordings had been made twenty-four hours after the first, same time each day, 3 P.M., with Kelley apparently sticking to her homemade scientific method, trying to reduce variables, I told Merlin, “Always taking samples at the exact same time.” I envisioned her hiding her little palm recorder as she and her parents moved around the lake, collecting algae and plants; doomed researchers with glass sample bottles, nets, and tweezers, scooping up seeds, all the while their tempers rising, the barely suppressed rage building toward what would, in less than forty-eight hours, explode into shotgun blasts.
Apparently Clay Qaqulik was also testing water that day, as his voice started the next exchange.
CLAY QAQULIK: There is something out there moving around at night. It’s not an animal.
TED HARMON: (snicker) Yeah, those little imaginary men?
CLAY QAQULIK: I don’t make fun of your culture.
CATHY HARMON: Go eat your fucking ice cream, Ted. Stop it.
TED HARMON: Ah! Yes! Stop! The perfect request, wouldn’t you say so, Clay? To halt? To cease? To hold off?
KELLEY: I can’t stand this.
CATHY: Don’t drink that water, Kelley! Stay away from those fucking bottles, I told you! Use the purification tablets on the lake water if . . . (cough) . . . if you’re (coughing)
On the recording, someone was throwing up. Eddie jotted down, on the lengthening list on the yellow legal pad, “coughing.”
KELLEY: I want to go back to Barrow. I want to go home.
TED: Home? What’s the matter with you? Are you deaf? How many times have I told you that we have three more lakes to visit before (gargling noise, grunting)
KELLEY: Why are you making those noises?
TED: (grunting)
KELLEY: Daddy, you’re scaring me.
TED: Fly . . . argh . . . in my . . . (cough) throat.
CLAY: Here’s the last bottle. My eyes hurt. This light . . . so bright . . .
The recordings ended. Eddie sat back at the table. Merlin said, “That’s it? No more?” Eddie replied, “Maybe that’s the way they were all the time in private, Uno. Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde. Nice all the time to friends in public, at each other’s throats at home.”
“No, if that were the case, Kelley wouldn’t have been surprised at their behavior. That kid is being exposed to this for the first time. Besides, if the parents were always like this, I can’t see them spending all that time with us. They’d never control themselves, not with that much rage in the air.”
“I guess,” Eddie said. “But you never really know what goes on between a couple.”
“What was that about light hurting?” Merlin said.
“Call the hospital. Ranjay must have started screening the blood, hair, and tissue by now.”
• • •
COULD A MOLD HAVE CAUSED THE SYMPTOMS? WE HEADED BACK TO THE research camp to search for stachybotrys, a green/black compound that could, if breathed in or ingested, produce aches, pains, fevers, cough, mood sensitivity, and immune suppression.
Poisons? Sengupta ran chemistry panels, seeking evidence of heavy metals or lead exposure or unidentified poisons in the blood.
Eddie explained to Merlin, “We ought to have an idea of toxics in a day, two at most.”
The redhead? Merlin said she was probably over at Borough Hall, carrying a “STOP LONGHORN NORTH” placard at a public hearing today where Dave and Deborah Lillienthal were testifying. He sent two detect
ives to find her.
By the end of the day I’d found no evidence of mold or gas residue at the cabin, and the yellow crime-scene tape was broken in one place, beaten down, bear tracks at that spot, and lumbering off into the tundra. The ground was wet and we found no human footprints. Merlin made a thorough search. No people had been here since yesterday.
At the hospital, Dr. Sengupta’s initial tests found, “No arsenic in the bloodstreams,” he reported via phone. “No heavy metals so far, no raised lead levels, no illegal drugs. And no flu. Lungs clear. No infection in the blood. No hypo or bite marks anywhere I can see.”
“Didn’t hurt to check.”
“However!” he said, excited. “All four of them had raised white blood cell counts, sixteen thousand in Clay Qaqulik, fourteen to fifteen thousand in the parents and the girl. So there’s an invader in there, but I’ve not found any virus or bacteria so far. I’m going with something chemical. Gas, maybe. They breathe it. It dissipates in air. But wood can absorb it. Cabin scrapings may show it.”
“We have the scrapings. Maybe you’ll see something we missed.”
I reported to the admiral as ordered and when he heard the test results he seemed less anxious. “No germs? Then that’s it for you two,” he said. “No connection! Get back to work, finish your survey. General Homza is breathing down my neck, just waiting for a chance to shut us down. I want to hear that you agree.”
“Back to the mission, sir,” I said.
“We’re giving up?” said Eddie when I clicked off.
“If it weren’t for Kelley’s phone call, it would have been a suicide/shooting,” I answered. “No question. If Kelley hadn’t made the recording, it would have been chalked up to one more piece of bad luck. Tragic accident. Autopsy shows death by shotgun. End of story, man.”
I punched in numbers in Washington, heard the phone ring on the other end, heard Valley Girl pick up in the computer section. She’d been instructed by the admiral’s secretary earlier to “Give Colonel Rush what he needs,” and so now remained under the impression that I could demand any accessible information, and she was to comply.
“I want to know about any studies or tests in Alaska, where any sort of radioactive material was deposited, especially on the North Slope. Seventy-year period. Note the ones we already know about and see if there’s something we don’t.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“See what you can find on grants given scientists over that same period by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Anything related to toxics or germ tests.”
Eddie’s eyes were bigger now, and he nodded, meaning, Go get ’em, One.
Valley Girl asked, “How deep, sir?”
“Bottom of the sea. Run all service branches. Including Defense Security Service,” I said, naming the Pentagon agency responsible for providing protection to private companies doing defense work. DSS helped out with electronic alarms, executive protection, armored cars, and even factory personnel screening. “Alaska. I want companies contracted to work on biowarfare. I want exact tests, years, and results. University research partners. Got it?”
“Colonel,” said Valley Girl excitedly, chewing her signature gum. “Is something happening in Alaska?”
“You are not to discuss this with anyone, even at the unit, get it?”
She sounded intimidated. “Of course, sir.”
“You’re the best we have,” I soothed. “So if you see something that doesn’t make sense to you, too much money for a small project, too little explanation of a test, extra money for cleanup, anything odd, a gap, a closed file, a reference, use your judgment. I trust you.”
Now her voice was happier. “Yes, sir!”
I clicked off. Eddie sighed. “Well, there goes our government grant work when we go private.”
“Who needs it? We’ll be capitalists, Eddie. No more government dole for us!”
“I got news for you, Uno. When we’re in Leavenworth prison, that’s government dole.”
I smiled. “Why? I never told Valley Girl that anything I’m asking for relates to the Harmons. It’s all mission. Background.” I smiled. “Chickening out, Marine?”
“Galli will go apeshit.”
I sighed. “I like the admiral, Dos, but right now he’s more worried about Wayne Homza. Galli knew exactly what he was getting when he asked me to stay.”
“The Light Brigade strikes again!”
“We find the redheaded woman, Eddie. And Kelley’s boyfriend, Leon Kavik. This could all have nothing to do with Washington. Or testing. It’s Friday night in Barrow, so I have a good idea of where those two may be.”
SIX
I wanted to speak to Kelley’s boyfriend. I ignored the voice in my head telling me that I should be with Karen. That it was 9 P.M. on a Friday night and I’d been working for over twenty-four hours. That I’d told her I’d take a break and meet her at the weekly roller rink dance. Instead, I called her to explain I’d be late.
“No problem,” said Karen, with the barest hesitation. Perhaps I’d not heard it at all.
“Give me till ten,” I said, as the Ford’s headlights swung off road, illuminated the Iñupiat Heritage Center.
The little voice in my head said, Hey, isn’t this how it started with your ex-wife? With excuses? Wasn’t this what you said you wouldn’t do if you fell in love again?
Getting out of the truck, I told that voice that Karen was a different person, not like my ex-wife. I told that voice, eyeing the two-story-high museum where Leon Kavik worked: Karen has security clearance. She understands the importance of this. Sengupta’s toxic screens haven’t come up with any hits. Maybe the boy can help.
The Heritage Center sat on North Street, near Arctic Family Medicine, the home for the elderly, and across the road from what looked like a small wooden shack but was an entrance to Barrow’s oddest feature, a three-hundred-million-dollar, 3.2-mile-long underground tunnel carved into permafrost, snaking through the city, to bring potable water from the lagoon, fiber optics and phone lines. Inside the tunnel, temperatures remained at forty-eight degrees.
“Oil taxes built the Utilador,” garrulous Dave Lillienthal always argued, over vodka, at our dinners on the base. “Oil paid for the old folks’ home.”
Bruce Friday usually snapped back: “One day you’ll blow a pipe offshore and kill or scare off every whale within a hundred miles.”
“Oh, posh! More Tito, Bruce?”
I wasn’t interested in their arguments now. I saw a lone figure inside the glass door, behind the admission area, wiping the counter, stooped, weighted, depressed.
Karen understands about completing a mission. What’s one more hour to wait?
Something about the scene in there reminded me of an Edward Hopper painting, Nighthawks. It was the sense of weary figures killing time, a diner in the painting, a museum here; but in both cases, night pressed in against human life. The figure beyond the glass door looked startled when I entered. He was tall and thin, wide nosed and thin lipped. He wore a spotted sealskin vest, thick workman’s painter pants, and a red-checkered flannel shirt. His stomach bulged over his silver buckled belt.
“We’re closed,” he said in a neutral tone.
“Leon? I’m Joe Rush. I’m helping out Chief Toovik. Can we talk about Kelley Harmon?”
He knew from my tone that this was an official visit. The look in his chocolate-colored eyes grew wide. He assumed I was a detective, at first. He glanced back into the museum, as if seeking help, but the only help back there was history; glass cases filled with Iñupiat harpoons, old skinning knives, wolverine ruffed polar bear fur parkas, mouth-chewed, softened sealskin boots.
I saw a big blowup shot of Merlin on a wall, standing on ice, bent toward the sea, eyeing the back of a bowhead whale with a harpoon sticking out. I saw black-and-white photos of elders; when they were young, carving up a caribou.
A stark, fishy odor filled the modern atrium, its rankness at odds with the curated, well-lit exhibits. The smell—I knew from visits here—meant that someone had been in back, in the community workshop, with a bucket of bloodied seal, building a new umiaq for the spring hunt.
“You’re a Marine?” the boy said, looking puzzled, handing back my ID. He seemed hemmed in by the counter. I felt that he wanted to leave. But it was unclear what he wanted to get away from. The investigation? Or the deaths?
“I’m a doctor,” I said. “We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened out there. I’m sorry, Leon, I heard you knew Kelley pretty well.”
Most museums are filled with artifacts from elsewhere. This one existed to explain the Iñupiat way of life to visitors, and to help educate young kids in town.
The boy said, softly, “Yes. I was a friend.”
“I know it’s late, Leon. Just a few questions.”
“What’s the point? I told the police what I knew.”
He wasn’t sullen, or defensive. It was more like I heard futility and grief. I said, softly, “Sometimes, when you’re trying to figure problems out, little things help.”
“She needed help before. And she didn’t get it.”
He walked out from behind the counter. He locked the front door, shut off the overhead lights, so a soft glow from streetlamps outside made the parka in a glass case seem alive. He beckoned me to follow and I trailed his slumped form down a shadowy corridor, into the glass-walled workshop in back, illuminated by a red nightlight. I saw a half dozen long, sturdy wooden worktables, tools on sideboards. This was where local artists carved walrus ivory into statuettes. I saw knives on the wall, neatly arranged hammers, saws, screwdrivers, and small jeweler-like hand tools. He took a stool. I sat down, too, making sure I stayed at eye level, to show respect.
“Leon, what do you mean, she needed help before? What was wrong before today, before the shooting?”