‘Yes,’ Truro said, blankly. ‘We are aware of that. We already have a full forensics report and a post-mortem. The grandparents wanted Lucas buried as soon as possible.’
‘I’m wondering, what you said about the mother. Could TaniaLee Littlefish have done this herself?’
Truro held up a hand.
‘I’ve been investigating homicides for twelve years, Miss Kiglatuk.’ He took trouble over the name. ‘We appreciate your statement. All this must have been such a distraction from the Iditarod. You’ll be wanting to get back to it. We might need your help when the case comes to court, but if we do we’ll fly you back over as a witness.’ She saw him glance at his watch then put on a thin imitation of a smile. ‘For now, you’ve been real helpful and we’re grateful.’
He turned and went up the path. Edie watched him taking his leave of the Littlefish couple. The pair seemed awkward, lost not so much in grief as in the effort of keeping it all in, she thought. She wondered if they knew what had happened to their grandson’s body between the time he died and the time she found him more than three months later. If their daughter had kept herself away and they hadn’t seen the body, there was no reason to suppose they did know. Then why was it their faces were so closed off? It was as though they were watching the whole event from an infinite distance.
Mayor Hillingberg approached and engaged Annalisa and the priest in conversation for a few minutes while his wife spoke with Otis. Hands were shaken and the Hillingbergs made a slow and dignified exit through the churchyard to their car, not stopping to comment to the waiting journalists. Not long afterwards, the Littlefishes followed them.
While the remaining guests filtered out of the churchyard and made their way towards the nearby hall where the funeral potlatch was being held, Edie snuck into the church and sat at the back and stared at the vast cross behind the altar. The hunter in her waited. The priest was laying a cloth over the altar. He was a thin man in his fifties with skin so white it was hard to imagine that blood ran through it.
The priest looked up, acknowledged her with a nod, and went back to his task.
‘I’m the woman who found the baby’s body,’ she said.
For a moment he seemed transfixed, his hands suspended in mid-air. Then, gathering himself, he finished whatever it was he was doing with the cloth, and made his way towards her.
‘They charged an Old Believer with the crime,’ she said. ‘You know that?’
The priest nodded.
She pointed to the crucifix above the altar. The same elaborate cross had been marked on the body of Lucas Littlefish.
‘This is special to the Orthodox Church?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We use the Patriarchal Cross. In our tradition that short horizontal above the crossbar represents the monogram hung over Jesus as he was on the cross, the one that read “King of the Jews”.’
For the first time he registered her ethnicity. ‘You’re Inupiaq?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m from the Eastern Arctic.’
‘Far from home.’
‘Very far,’ she said. At that moment, she felt it. ‘I’m wondering. Do the Old Believers use the same cross?’ From the corner of her eye she could see he was intrigued by the question and wanted to know why she had asked. For some reason, he thought better of it.
‘That short horizontal?’ he said. ‘No. It was one of the reasons they split from the true Orthodoxy; that, and other matters to do with priests, the signing of the cross. They call it the raskol. It means pulling apart.’ He gave a little cough.
‘It must have been tough for them, feeling exiled.’ She knew how that felt too. To be an outsider in your own domain.
‘They chose to leave,’ the priest replied coldly.
There was a pause. She sensed there was more he wanted to say, but didn’t dare.
Picking up on the mood she looked him directly in the eye.
‘There are rumours that the Dark Believers took the boy.’
The priest’s face took on a pained look, the eyes flickering from one side of the church to the other, as though anxious not to be overheard.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘I need to know.’
The priest looked at her then said, in a low voice, ‘Follow me outside the church.’
They stepped out into the light, their breath condensing into plumes before them.
‘People say they’ve come from the Old Believers, that they’re taking them over. They say this was bound to happen, that the date of the raskol is evidence of that.’
‘When the Old Believers split from the Orthodoxy?’
He blinked as though this was painful for him to say: ‘1666.’ He leaned towards her and said, very softly, ‘Do you understand what that means?’
She nodded.
He wiped a hand across his face and gave her a look of such intensity, it was almost painful. ‘Go carefully,’ he said.
16
Chuck Hillingberg and Andy Foulsham were sitting at the table with the view out across Cook Inlet to the city, which the manager of the Skipper Seafood Shack always saved for the mayor, in case he came by, as he often did at lunchtime. From the funeral, Marsha had gone to one of her long-scheduled Pioneer Women’s lunches, leaving Chuck and Andy to talk about damage limitation still to be done to repair the mayor’s hopeless, stumbling performance in front of the cameras the previous morning.
The problem, in essence, was that he’d completely underestimated Dark Believer Fever. Unlike his wife, who really went in for all the accoutrements of a particular brand of conservative evangelism, Chuck was nothing if not practical in his professed beliefs. He was a hypocrite and knew himself to be. He’d made his peace with that. Marsha was different. Her belief in creationism, like her belief in the existence of Satan, was held in all sincerity. It made her private preferences all the more baffling to him. But it was as though she never questioned the contradictions. Who was it who said that it was a sign of a fine intelligence to be able to hold two contradictory positions in your head at the same time? Maybe Marsha was simply smarter than him.
The waitress came over. He checked her name – Janine – and was careful to use it as he ordered his usual reindeer steak. The business of eating reindeer, moose, salmon or halibut whenever he went out in public was about good PR and it was just one of the many things he wouldn’t miss about Alaska. Sometimes he needed to remind himself why he was doing all this, and the dismal prospect of making his way through yet another salmon steak or reindeer burger was as good a memory jog as any.
Another was this view. Supporters would sit and lunch with him here and wax lyrical about the Anchorage skyline, little imagining that the mayor would be admiring it for other reasons entirely. For him, the skyline, like the reindeer, served only to reinforce his determination to get out, first to Juneau, which was even more of a dump, then to the lower 48. He liked to look out across the Inlet and imagine he was somewhere twice the size, Portland, Oregon say, then somewhere six times the size and so on all the way to Washington, DC.
In this too, he realized, he differed from his wife. Marsha’s ambition seemed to begin and end at the state line. Alaska and Alaskans were, for her, everything and that kind of passionate conviction was the hardest thing to fake, in local politics especially. If he was the vaulter, she was the pole. He was well aware that, without her, he’d never have made it out of Wasilla.
He checked his watch. His afternoon was likely to consist of putting calls through to his friends at the larger media organizations in order to try to make amends for his radical lack of understanding of the Dark Believer story. He and Andy had already been through the routine. He would say how deeply he understood the public concern over satanists and it was precisely for this reason that he’d been so keen to focus in his press interviews on the arrest of Peter Galloway for the terrible crime of killing Lucas Littlefish. He’d sound contrite without admitting he’d been wrong. Words like missteps would be liberally sprinkled through his speech. Once
that was done, he would put a private call through to Mac and make sure steps had now been taken to clear the Lodge. At three or thereabouts, he would fly out to whichever Iditarod checkpoint Steve Nicols had got to and have his picture taken with the favourite to win. He’d use his time on the plane to work on the piece he and Marsha had already drafted for the Courier. Then there was yet another fundraising dinner to get through. He hadn’t yet decided whether to take up Marsha’s advice to call a meeting with Byron Hallstrom. If tonight’s pledges looked healthy, he’d hold off for a while. He had nothing against Hallstrom except that, first, he wasn’t an Alaskan, was only just barely an American, having been naturalized only a year or two before and, secondly, he hadn’t ever dealt with the man before. It wouldn’t look good for him to be seen taking money from a man who was, to all intents and purposes, a foreigner and whose interest in Alaska was only very recent.
The waitress came by again. He was expecting to hear that the kitchen had run out of the venison, in which case he’d order the halibut, but Janine’s message was altogether more surprising. Chief of Police Mackenzie had arrived, she explained, and was waiting for him in the parking lot.
Chuck pinched the napkin off his lap and slung it on the table. He felt his face darken. Where was Mackenzie at, ordering him around? Telling Andy to wait where he was, Chuck stood up, pushed back his chair and walked out into the lot. Chief Mackenzie was leaning up against his official vehicle, mouthing into a cell phone. Seeing Chuck approach, he cut his call short and came over to shake the mayor’s hand.
‘Sorry about this, Mr Mayor.’ Chuck raised a brow. He and Mackenzie only called one another by their official titles when there were others listening. He looked around. There was a driver in the vehicle, but no one else.
‘You mind if we talk in the vehicle?’ Mackenzie was holding the door to the back seat open. The driver got out, flustered, and moved off to a discreet distance. Chuck went up to the vehicle and sat himself inside. Mackenzie opened up the other side and got in. He seemed explosively tense, his mouth an awkward tremble between fear and rage. Chuck gave the police chief an impatient, silent ‘So?’
‘I just heard on my way here, that’s why I didn’t call before.’ Mackenzie heaved in a huge breath, shut his eyes momentarily against the shit storm in his head. ‘A couple of uniformed officers with dogs found another dead baby, same MO – body left in a spirit house, wrapped up, same whacked-out cross. Smothered probably. Looks like the boy was dead some time before he was dumped, just like the first one.’
Chuck slumped back. This was the last thing he’d been expecting. For a moment he couldn’t think for the pounding in his head. His gut had knotted and his throat was dry. Keeping the first kid off the front pages had been hard enough, but a serial killer, that had the potential to capsize the Iditarod, and, more importantly, to completely overwhelm the gubernatorial campaign. In short, it was a fucking disaster. He chewed his lip, trying to focus.
‘Any ID on the kid?’
The police chief shook his head. ‘Jonny Doe. We’re checking hospital records now. One thing, he had Down Syndrome.’
‘Didn’t I say keep this story low? Didn’t I say exactly that?’
Chuck closed his eyes for a moment, trying to collect himself. He was thinking he needed to speak with Marsha.
‘The uniforms just came across this kid?’
Mackenzie hesitated. ‘They were searching the area. The dogs led them to the body.’
This put a whole new slant on it. ‘You got dog teams up there? You telling me you authorized a search?’ Surprised by the raised voice inside the car, the driver turned his head to check on the two men, saw there was nothing to be alarmed about, and then positioned himself with his back to them once more. Chuck told himself to calm down. He needed complete control over this. He stared ahead, willing himself to sound more measured. ‘You actually opened this sewer and let the shit roll out all over us?’
Mackenzie sighed. ‘Truro went up there with a team and some body dogs. If I’d known about this, it never would have happened, but I didn’t. Seems like Truro did it off his own bat.’
Chuck closed his eyes to absorb this for a moment.
The police chief wore a look of shame. Chuck had to credit the man with one thing: he was in no doubt about the degree to which he’d fucked up. He felt an overwhelming urge to punch Mackenzie out. Instead, he grabbed one fist in another, working the fingernails into the skin to give himself some relief from the tension.
‘The fella you got for the first one.’
‘Peter Galloway.’
‘When d’you bring him in?’
‘Three days ago.’ Mackenzie had a grim smile on his face to indicate he’d anticipated the question. It made him look damned smug, Chuck thought. Asshole. ‘We don’t got all the forensics in yet, but judging from the pattern of ice on the body it looks like this latest one’s been out in the forest maybe around four or five days, though the preliminary findings suggest he’s been dead longer than that. Seems like the first kid, the body was kept in storage before being put out. We’re thinking he was dumped a day or maybe two days after the first.’
‘You got any other babies reported missing?’
‘Some old cases, parental abduction most likely. Nothing open that ties in.’
That was a relief. Chuck was already thinking about Marsha’s reaction. He wanted to make sure he was in full possession of the facts before he spoke to her, or to anyone.
‘Has anyone questioned Galloway about this one yet?’
‘They’re at the Pen now. He’s denying it, naturally, but we dug up some prior on him in Canada and what with the witness testimony on the first killing and a little forensic help, I think we can nail the A-wipe.’
Mackenzie was perfectly capable of manipulating evidence to get a result. So long as he kept his old friend out of it, Chuck didn’t care. From the sounds of things, this Galloway greaseball was guilty anyway.
‘Has the governor taken any interest yet?’
Mackenzie gave a wolfish smile. ‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’
That much rang true. Governor Shippon spent so long sitting on his laurels in Juneau that most of the time he seemed content to forget the rest of the state existed. His record suggested that his complacency extended to electioneering, too. Shippon wasn’t known for his proactive approach to winning votes. So far as he was concerned, the state apparatus and the family firm were more or less indivisible entities. His daddy had been governor before him, and his uncle Wright Shippon had been the senior state senator ever since Chuck was a boy. But however lazy and complacent Shippon might be, he wasn’t stupid. He was unlikely to pass up an easy opportunity to stick in the knife and jigger it around some. The APD could pass this one over to the state police, but they’d look spineless and inept if they did and there would be more of a chance that Shippon would intervene. Since they were already associated with the first case, they would have more control over the situation by keeping this latest killing close. The mayor thought hard.
‘Here’s what you do,’ he began. ‘You put out a press release, stressing that you already got Galloway in jail and saying you aren’t looking for anyone else in connection with this latest one. You don’t say shit about the occult stuff, the Dark Believer stuff, OK? You keep the cross and all that completely under wraps. Then you talk to Truro and you make sure he understands no one’s gonna be looking for any more bodies. No searches, no dogs. He’s not happy with that, take him off the case, suspend him if you have to, but discreetly. We don’t want press to think anyone’s questioning his competence.’
‘Sure, boss.’ Mackenzie was wearing his trusty face. It made Chuck want to punch him all over again.
‘And listen, if the Lodge isn’t cleared out yet, you make sure it gets done before the end of the working day. I don’t want to know anything about it, OK? Just get it done.’
17
Edie and Derek were at the studio watching KDTV’s coverage of
the Iditarod on the TV with the sound turned down. They’d both been subdued since the funeral.
‘I guess one of us should be getting back up to Nome,’ Derek said. Pulling out his packet of Lucky Strikes he began tamping it on the table distractedly. He had been calling in to the Iditarod HQ in Nome for regular updates on Sammy’s progress. Sammy himself hadn’t been in touch and nor did they expect him to be unless a problem arose. There was no pressing reason for either Derek or Edie to be up at HQ, except in so far as it was official race protocol. He slid a cigarette from the packet and lit it.
Edie told him what the priest had said.
Derek was sceptical about the existence of the Dark Believers. ‘It’s got all the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory, like some kind of urban legend,’ he said. ‘I mean, what’s the evidence?’ In the past year, and especially since he’d had his research on lemmings published, he’d come over all empiricist. If there was no evidence for something, he refused to believe in it. Maybe that was a good thing in a policeman. It just wasn’t very Inuit.
‘If it was the Old Believers or this dark subset who took Lucas, why would they use the wrong cross to mark him?’ Edie said.
‘Maybe whoever did it didn’t know what the right one was?’
‘In which case, he couldn’t have been a Believer.’
‘Exactly,’ Derek said.
‘Which brings us back to Tommy Schofield and the land deal. Could Schofield have set Peter Galloway up?’
‘It’s possible, but that would be pretty extreme, don’t you think? You met Schofield. He seem like a baby killer to you?’
Edie shrugged. Derek’s question only begged another. What does a baby killer look like? Edie knew the answer to that one better than most. A baby killer is someone who looks like you or me.
‘Assuming Schofield actually killed Lucas Littlefish. We already know that Lucas had been dead weeks before he was put out in the snow. Maybe this was Schofield’s way of disposing of the dead boy after someone else had already killed him, and getting Galloway out of the way at the same time.’
The Boy in the Snow Page 11