Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

There were illustrations of various artifacts, including bent-wood visors, seal-gut tunics, wooden breastplates, spirit masks wonderfully carved and decorated with beads, feathers and shells, and ivory figurines representing salmon, otters, seals, whales. It was illustrative of a rich and varied culture, and deeply interesting to Liam, who as a resident of southwest Alaska for less than three months was a stranger in the strangest land he had ever visited.

He turned the page and halted. The caption read, “Storyknife,” and the illustration showed something eerily similar to the ivory knife that had been used to murder Don Nelson. The one in the book was more slender in form, more graceful in curve, with a narrower blade and a softer point, but still the two were recognizable as serving the same purpose. Liam's eyes dropped to the text. The knife in the book, unlike the murder weapon, had been carved of ivory, although the text indicated that they could be carved of bone, wood or antler as well. Tradition held that storyknives were made by uncles for nieces. There wasn't all that much to be known about storyknives, he gathered, as it was a custom that had died out about the same time contact had been made with the first Russian explorers. The curse of a culture with no written language.

He closed the book and looked at the map of Alaska stuck to the near wall of the tent with duct tape. Bristol Bay was south and east of the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta, but not so far and not so thin of rivers that the Delta Yupik couldn't have wandered into the Bay. They must have come, and brought their storyknives with them. The method of Don Nelson's murder was all Liam needed for proof.

He opened the book again and saw the owner's name inside the cover. Don Nelson, a street address, Seattle. If found, return postage guaranteed. He closed the book again. If he wasn't mistaken in his Seattle geography, that address was north of the University of Washington. Nelson, who looked young enough to be a graduate student, might have been enrolled at U-Dub. Maybe a call would put Liam in touch with his next of kin.

Not a task he was looking forward to, that he ever looked forward to, the part of the job that any law enforcement officer dreaded. He put the book back and bumped the Blazo box in the process. A small spiral notebook with a bright blue cover dropped from the folds of a white Gap Beefy T-shirt, size medium. He opened it and read a few entries in a big, looping hand.

June 28

Found an otter charm, probably off a visor. Man, did the old folks know how to carve! There is more art in an Aleut visor than there is in a '57 Chevy. Says a lot about a people when they could make something so necessary and so functional so beautiful as well.

July 1

A family from Icky came down the river today in skiffs. Looked like they were going fishing. Said they were descendants of the people who lived on this bluff. Lynny pissed off the father when he said this was now Park Service land and they were trespassing. Daughter sure was pretty. Tried to talk to her but Mom wasn't having any. Maybe I'll look her up, if Lynny ever gives me any time off. Hasn't happened yet.

July 6

Uncovered a storyknife today. Made of bone, old enough for the carving to be worn smooth. Lynny's all torqued because it's too far east.

July 9

There's a dump site of some kind a mile east from camp. Lynny's not interested in anything but what we can find here. Which means what he can find to support his thesis. Academics.

The one-word condemnation made Liam smile. He'd been to graduate school himself. The truth was that Nelson, if he was a graduate student, would eventually have evolved into an academic himself, scrambling to defend his own thesis from the attacks of competitors. The fight for an original thesis was bellicose and bloody, especially since the advent of offset printing. If you wanted tenure, you had to publish. If you wanted to publish, you needed a thesis topic sexy enough to satisfy your committee and attract a publisher. Liam had suffered through his share of required texts, and his opinion was that academic writers who could get through a hundred thousand words without once using the phrase “As we shall see” were deserving of the Nobel Prize in literature, not to mention the grateful adulation of advanced students everywhere. But then, not everyone could be Barbara Tuchman. Liam was still mad at her for dying.

He flipped to the last page of the journal, which was dated the previous Saturday.

July 25

Lynny went to town yesterday, like always. He told me to work on three-C but I poked around the dump site instead. Hate to admit it but I think it's modern. Feeling sick. Couldn't eat. Don't know how I could have picked up a bug out here. Lynny must have brought one back from town.

Poor Nelson. The sick and the dead, he thought irrepressibly. He chastised himself for the irreverence, and pocketed the journal to read through completely later. Frank Petla had seemed familiar with the village site and the surrounding area; perhaps he'd made a habit of dropping in to see what he could scrounge in the way of marketable artifacts. Perhaps that habit had been witnessed by Don Nelson. Perhaps Nelson had noted it down in his journal. The district prosecutor, a short, bellicose redhead of Irish descent who advocated the return of the death penalty, would like that. The jury would positively love it.

He picked through the rest of the detritus, not finding much. There were a lot of tools, and six large three-ring binders labeled “Costumes,” “Weapons,” “Utensils,” “Hunting,” “Crafts,” “ Religion.” They were filled with a cramped, deliberate handwriting totally unlike Nelson's sprawling penmanship, by which Liam deduced that they were McLynn's notebooks. They included penciled drawings of various artifacts of such precision and delicacy that Liam reluctantly revised his opinion of McLynn's talents up a notch.

There wasn't much else. Some clothes that smelled as if they hadn't been washed in weeks, some recreational reading featuring such diverse characters as Emma Woodhouse, Richard Sharpe and Job Napoleon Salk. There was a Walkman with a dozen tapes, including the Beastie Boys, Loreena McKennitt, Fastball and theTitanicsoundtrack. Liam was not impressed, but then under Bill's tutelage he was learning to appreciate Jimmy Buffett. Plowing straight ahead come what may. That's me, Liam thought, the cowboy in the jungle.

He poked around some more, but there wasn't much else to find. He was reluctant to leave, though, and not just because Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell was waiting for him at the other end. Liam had never been on the site of an archaeological dig before and he admitted to some curiosity. All the neat little squares with all their neat little layers being revealed one at a time. There were half a dozen brushes of various sizes and kinds of bristles lying around; Liam realized that the brushes must be what were used to reveal the next layer down, and marveled at the patience the science required. It was probably enormously taxing physically as well: long hours of crouching over a specific section of dirt, moving the bristles patiently back and forth, back and forth. There was a square sieve made of wire mesh in a wooden frame; they must strain the dirt before they tossed it so they didn't miss any pieces, however tiny. Kind of like casework, Liam thought. Only in casework he was the sieve.

It was by now late afternoon, and the sun still beat on the outside of the tent, raising the interior temperature to what felt like ninety degrees. Flies buzzed over the patch of dried blood, but they didn't sound very enthusiastic about it. During the excavation process the flaps would probably have to remain closed to keep the bugs out, so there would be little or no circulation. Liam preferred a job that kept him outside much of the time, even if it meant that he must occasionally suffer the slings and arrows- not to mention the knives and bullets-of outrageous citizenry. But he'd take fresh air with a bullet over crouching in an old grave in a closed tent any day.