The Boy in the Snow

by M. J. McGrath

  When the comms director had gone, she said: ‘You need to clear out the Lodge. Now. Everything.’

  Chuck closed his eyes and sighed. He was already regretting the whole Lodge business. What a headache.

  ‘And we should put in an appearance at that dead kid’s funeral tomorrow. I’ll have April make the arrangements.’

  Chuck passed a hand over his forehead.

  ‘Then there’s someone we need to meet with about campaign funds. Someone we haven’t asked yet. I got an idea he might be persuaded to fund some advertisements.’

  Chuck sighed wearily. ‘I’ll need to check with Andy.’

  Marsha drew closer, her arms tightly folded across her body.

  ‘Screw Andy.’

  14

  Edie hadn’t been back five minutes when the intercom buzzed.

  ‘You went weird,’ Derek said, voice tinny over the wire. ‘I’ve been waiting for you at the coffee bar across the road, I figured Sammy can do without me for a coupla days.’

  She smiled to herself. ‘Come on up,’ she said. ‘I just got back from Homer.’

  It was good to see a familiar face. His breath smelled of cigarette smoke. She reached out for his parka and pulled him in. ‘You were right about driving. Trying to get that goddamned truck round those mountain roads was like rolling a greased seal across new ice.’

  She told him about her visit to the Littlefishes, how Schofield had lied about knowing them and that when she’d asked him if he knew Fonseca he claimed that he hadn’t been following the story of the boy’s death, which seemed to suggest that he knew the two were connected – information that, so far as Edie knew, wasn’t in the public domain.

  ‘You think he knows who Fonseca is?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s possible he got flustered when I asked about the Littlefishes and just tripped up. In any case, if he does know Fonseca, he’s not telling.’

  ‘That was a big thing for the Littlefishes to invite you to the funeral. A trusting thing.’ Like Edie, Derek had grown up around all the old taboos, was as familiar with them as he was with the whites of his fingernails. He’d travelled enough around the north to know that most indigenous people were reluctant to talk about the dead with outsiders. For the most part they kept burials and the rituals associated with them to themselves. Oftentimes, it brought bad luck even to mention the dead person’s name after the burial. There were folk who thought it stirred up the spirits, made them unwilling to accept they were no longer among the living.

  ‘Maybe they just want to put me off the scent,’ she said.

  Derek turned his head and gave a rasping laugh.

  ‘That case, they have no idea who they’re dealing with.’

  ‘I think we should both go.’ She told him about the confirmation of what she had suspected all that time, that Lucas Littlefish had been dead months before whoever it was laid his body out in the forest. ‘We might meet someone at the funeral who can help us. And in any case, it doesn’t hurt to go along, pay respects, show the Littlefishes that we care.’

  ‘Because?’

  Edie flashed Derek one of her exasperated looks.

  ‘Because we do. Because I do, OK? I care a lot.’

  He sighed and shook his head. ‘Edie, I know you don’t wanna hear this, but this stuff is beginning to stink. You need to tell Detective Truro what you know, let the right people deal with it.’

  She waved a hand at him impatiently. ‘He’s gonna know about Lucas being long dead already from forensics. So, why was he working so hard to get me to say Galloway did it the day I found the body?’

  ‘I don’t know, Edie, but I know our business is with the Iditarod.’

  Edie thought about Sammy, how much he needed the race. She hadn’t let him down yet, but the more she got wrapped up in the Lucas Littlefish case, the more likely she wouldn’t be there when he most needed her.

  ‘OK,’ she said, with difficulty, ‘let’s go see Detective Truro. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on Lucas Littlefish.’

  Derek pulled the rental to the kerb outside the APD’s offices in downtown Anchorage. She hauled herself out and made her way across the road without looking. The traffic slowed and veered around her, horns blowing. A man leaned out of his window and screamed, ‘Dumbass bitch!’ He gave her the finger.

  She returned it with both hands. ‘Put one of these aside for later.’

  Entering the rotating doors, the motion feeling agreeably like rolling a kayak, she came out into the foyer of the trooper building. The receptionist told her to wait. A little while later the same woman with the clipboard who had first escorted her to Truro’s workstation appeared. She searched for the name. Kathy.

  ‘What can I do for you, Miss Kiglake?’

  ‘It’s Kiglatuk.’ Kathy flashed her a mean smile. ‘I need to talk to Detective Truro.’

  The woman’s mouth went tight.

  ‘We’re real busy today,’ she said.

  ‘I got more I need to tell Detective Truro about the boy. Lucas Littlefish. About what I know.’

  ‘That’s nice, Miss Kiglake.’ Kathy took in a breath and pulled herself up to her full height, which wasn’t high. ‘Only Detective Truro got no need to hear it. We already made an arrest this morning and things are kinda getting busy here today.’ She was about to turn away, when Edie reached out a hand and held her back.

  ‘You charged Peter Galloway?’

  Kathy made a low humming ‘uh huh’ and finished it off with a satisfied ‘you betcha’.

  Edie burst through the rotating doors out into the cold of the early evening and pulled open the passenger door of the rental.

  ‘They charged Galloway already.’

  ‘They did?’

  ‘They didn’t want to hear what I had to say. Something’s not right. I don’t know what and I don’t know why, but it’s like Detective Truro’s got his story and he’s sticking with it.’

  Derek looked at her. His shoulders rose and fell and he sighed. She could see he understood then that she would go on with it regardless. She could also see that he was on her side.

  ‘You in the mood for a drive?’ She turned on the car radio.

  ‘So long as I’m the one doing the driving.’

  ‘I thought we might go for a spin to Meadow Lake,’ she said. ‘I hear it’s lovely at night.’

  As they left Anchorage behind them, a yellowish grey smear on a dark horizon, it was a relief to Edie not to be driving. At the fork in the road between the Glenn and George Parks Highways they turned west towards Wasilla. The ploughs had been out but the blacktop was already icing back over. Just outside of Wasilla, by Meadow Lake, an owl rose up and away from the truck and they came to the turn-off to the Hatcher Pass. The tyres whirled, searching for a purchase, then, finding it, swung the rental around onto the unmade, unploughed track. In the darkness, Edie could no longer be sure of the familiar curve in the road where she’d gone into the forest after the bear, or the place she’d come out after finding Lucas. Eventually they came to the gate of the Old Believer compound, picked out of the darkness by a lamp hanging in the trees above.

  Derek pulled over and cut the engine.

  ‘I sure hope this isn’t about some bear.’

  ‘No, not the bear.’

  He turned in the seat to look at her. There was a resolute expression on his face, she thought. He didn’t approve of what she was doing but he was going to do whatever he could to help her do it. She couldn’t ask for more.

  She got out of the car, sucking in the rush of cold, outside air, and felt strong. Being shut in anywhere, even inside a car, wrecked her confidence, made her feel weak. Right now she needed to be in the open.

  Derek followed. They could hear sounds coming from the compound, a faint harmonium of voices. Clambering over the gate, they made their way in single file up the track. The sound of singing grew louder. Just before the clearing they stopped. The only light seemed to be coming from the church. Suddenly the singing stopped a
nd a man began chanting. There was something raw about the sound that left a deep throb of disquiet in Edie’s belly.

  ‘My grandmother once told me that the missionaries made the Inuit women working for them wear skirts. Cotton skirts. In the High Arctic winter. They said God didn’t want women wearing trousers.’

  ‘People believe all kinds of crazy things, you give ’em half the chance,’ Derek said.

  ‘I had to witness that daub on the body of the little boy, Police. It was ugly and I don’t mean walrus ugly. I mean some whole other universe of ugly. Truth is, I wanna see what they get up to, if any of the Satan stuff is true.’

  Suddenly the chanting stopped and the sound of a single wailing voice found them. Men and women began to trickle out from the church.

  ‘They’re hardly going to be doing it now, with the police and the press all over them. You’re tired, Edie, you’re not thinking straight.’

  They made it back to the car. The engine guttered into life. A blast of warm air coughed out from the ventilators.

  ‘Turn around and drive back to that bend in the track.’

  He did what she asked but this time he kept the engine running.

  ‘Is this where you found the boy?’

  She nodded, pointing into the great dark blank of forest.

  ‘When I ran into them, Peter and Natalia Galloway were on their way back to the compound but they weren’t out on the road here, they were cutting through the forest. It looked as though they’d been in town, shopping. I don’t know how much I believe of what she said, but I believe that part. Lucas Littlefish was left on a route the Galloways must have regularly used, just outside the boundary of the Old Believer land. But I guess other people used that path, too.’

  It had begun snowing, the flakes coming down until the windshield wipers could not move fast enough to keep the glass clear enough to see through. For an instant Edie felt as though she was being buried, the snow just one of many things, memories mostly, pressing down on her. She laid her fingers on the door handle.

  ‘Edie, this is crazy.’ But she was already jumping down into the snow.

  He got out and came round to her side.

  ‘It’s dark and the snow’s not letting up any time soon.’

  ‘That’s why we have to do it now,’ she said. ‘No one will see us and we can follow our tracks back to the car.’

  As he went back around to the driver’s side to switch off the engine, a figure suddenly loomed out from the spruces. The figure, a girl of about fifteen, stared, apparently dazed, and then just as suddenly as she had appeared, she evaporated into the trees like a startled deer. Derek swung round, bug-eyed. For a moment they were both paralysed. Beside them, the truck growled low.

  ‘Dammit, Edie, I know that girl! She was being led into the Chukchi Motel in Nome a couple of days ago. I swear it is the same one. She was with a couple of much older men.’ As Derek spoke, his eyes glittered.

  Grabbing the flashlight from the trunk, they hurried down the track to where the girl had been. Edie felt her heart pound, the old thrill of the chase. Reaching the spot where the girl had been standing, she trained the flashlight on the trail of footprints and began to follow it through the trees and deeper into the forest. The snow cover was much sparser here and the prints more difficult to follow. It was dark as all hell too, the moonlight filtering through only occasionally in splashes and the proximity of the trees made Edie feel discomfortingly enclosed. The air smelled of electricity and spruce bark and somewhere distant she could detect the tang of human fear. Behind her sounded the faint purr of the car engine. It occurred to her suddenly that it might have been foolish to leave the engine running.

  They reached a small clearing. Here the girl had tramped about, creating a confusing muddle of prints, some of which seemed to lead off in radials through the forest. The girl’s intention was clear: she meant to buy time. There was nothing for it but to follow each spur of prints one by one until they found the one that led away from the clearing. This took several minutes and by then, they knew, the girl would almost certainly be too far away. There was no point in getting up a sweat. They slowed to a fast walk, following the steps as the girl’s trail turned back on itself and headed once more towards the track and the car. They flashed one another an anxious glance. Reaching the edge of the woods, they scanned up the track. The car was about a hundred metres further up, right where they’d left it, the engine idling. She shone the flashlight along the ground. A single set of footprints led in the direction of the car. The girl had been running, fast now. They followed the prints, breaking into a jog up the hill to the vehicle, where they stopped before disappearing back off into the forest. Of the girl herself there was no sign.

  Edie slumped over, hands on legs for a moment, her breath heavy from the effort of running. Beside her, Derek scoped the flashlight across the dark expanse of trees. For a moment she thought she heard a faint rustling coming from the woods but it might just as easily have come from an animal or snow falling from the spruce branches as anything produced by the girl. It might even be the sound of her own blood rushing through her veins. Quickly, she pulled open the door of the vehicle, lowered herself into the passenger seat, panting, trying to calm herself a little.

  ‘Edie, look.’ Derek was pointing at the windshield. Now it suddenly became clear why the girl had backtracked to the car. For a moment Edie sat back, taking it all in. Across the glass, the girl had carved a pattern in the snow with her fist; here and there, Edie could still see the knuckle marks. The lines and curves came into focus until a complex maze-like shape emerged. For a moment Edie just sat there with her eyes open, struggling to stave off an inexplicable urge to sob. Whatever was happening, she felt inextricably caught up in it now, trapped in a series of events whose sinister connections she was as yet unable to comprehend.

  ‘What is it?’

  Derek shrugged, his eye following the lines, a look of bewilderment on his face. His hand delved into his pocket and came out with a small hardcover reporter’s pad and a pencil and sketched out the pattern of lines. On paper it remained as puzzling as ever.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not exactly it.’ She got out of the car and went around to the front. She closed her eyes and watched as patterns resolved themselves in deep red on the back of her retinas. Then she got back in the car, took the pad from Derek and made a couple of corrections to the sketch.

  ‘Show me,’ he said.

  She held out the pad. IIIaXTa. It’s Russian.’ She’d forgotten he’d had a Russian girlfriend and spoke a little of the language.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means “mine”.’

  15

  The next morning, trouble starting the truck delayed Edie and Derek’s departure from Anchorage. They’d hoped to get to Eagle River early before any of the mourners arrived, give themselves a chance to look around, but by the time they reached the churchyard, a few of Lucas Littlefish’s relatives were already standing by the entrance to the onion-domed church in the cold morning sunshine, some chatting, but most silent and watchful. A handful of reporters had stationed themselves at the gate into the churchyard. Otis and Annalisa Littlefish were at the church door with the priest. Under their fur parkas they were wearing elaborately embroidered buckskin clothing, on their feet exquisite, hand-sewn mukluks edged with fur and beads. There was no sign of TaniaLee. At the periphery, among the spirit house graves, stood Detective Truro in a dark grey suit.

  A hearse rolled up, came to a slow stop. The photographers at the gate clustered round. There was a frantic clicking and the flash of lights. Beside the entrance, Edie saw Annalisa Littlefish blink back tears. Two pallbearers slid the tiny coffin from its fixings and began to proceed with it up the path towards the church. It struck Edie that there was something incongruous about this, something staged and fake. As the pallbearers passed, Annalisa Littlefish reached out a hand and for a moment laid it on the coffin, her lips moving in grief.

&nbs
p; Edie and Derek waited until the last of the relatives had filed in behind the coffin, and then followed them in. At the entrance to the church, Edie felt a hand on her arm and turned.

  ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’ Detective Truro raised an eyebrow quizzically.

  Evidently, Otis and Annalisa hadn’t told the detective about her visit. She wondered if there was anything to be read into that.

  ‘Your assistant, Kathy, told me,’ she lied. ‘I came to see you.’

  His eyes opened a little then his face closed over again.

  ‘It’s been a busy time.’

  During the service she thought about the boy, how he hadn’t had time enough in the world to accumulate friends, lovers, memories. She considered all the things he’d missed out on: the dizzying delights of childhood, the shaping hurts. She thought about what lay ahead for TaniaLee. Edie knew that even if the girl recovered, she would, for the rest of her life, feel every birthday, each holiday and family gathering without her son, like a thorn working its way deeper into her flesh.

  Filing out at the end of the service, she spotted the Anchorage mayor, Chuck Hillingberg, and his wife, Marsha, sitting neatly on the back pew. Uncertain as to whether or not he recognized her, the mayor flashed Edie a thin smile just in case. She saw his wife clock the smile and follow it with her gaze, then Marsha Hillingberg leaned in and whispered something to her husband and the smile vanished.

  Outside, in the sun, Detective Truro stood and watched the crowd filing out of the church. Leaving Derek, Edie went over.

  ‘I came round to your office last night.’ She leaned in to him and lowered her voice. ‘Lucas Littlefish died a long while before I found his body.’