Dana Stabenow: So Sure Of Death

Whatever else he was, Don Nelson wasn't a professional cook. Wy wondered if McLynn had got him from Job Service in Anchorage, notorious all over the state for sending just-released felons to summer jobs in the Bush. Despite the appeal of that idea, it was more likely that he was a college student earning his tuition. If so, this job was better than sliming salmon any day.

There were two cots against the back wall of the tent with Blazo box nightstands and two deck chairs flanking them. A case of Budweiser and a bottle of Josè Cuervo Gold sat next to one of the chairs, Wy would bet not McLynn's. The boxes overflowed with papers and journals and magazines and hardcover books, some of which were bound in real leather and some of which looked as if they'd outweigh her son.

Her son. She took a moment to savor the words. Liam's image flashed through her mind, and she booted it out before it took hold, only to have her parents' images take his place: thin, quiet people who saw their duty and did it. Her adoptive parents had never had children of their own, had never told her that they expected her to do anything but graduate from college and become a teacher. She'd done the first and blown the last. They still loved her, though, in their undemonstrative fashion. It was why she still loved them. She owed them a call, too, she thought guiltily. Maybe even a trip into town. They'd met Tim, but they needed more time with him to bond into proper grandparents. She hoped they'd spoil him rotten. Tim could use some spoiling.

Maybe after he came back off the river with Moses, he could have a week in town with his grandparents. And she could follow for a quick visit, put the business on hold long enough to-

“He's not supposed to leave the dig unattended,” McLynn said.

Recalled to the present, Wy looked around to see him standing in the open flap of the tent, surveying the interior with a disapproving frown.

Wy didn't see anything so valuable it needed guarding, but she remembered her paycheck before she said so. “Let's take a look around. Maybe he didn't hear the plane.”

McLynn followed her out of the tent and across the grass-covered earth to the other tent, twenty-five feet away. The steady southwest wind stopped dead in its tracks for a moment, no more. It was enough for the smell to reach her.

She halted, McLynn bumping into her. “What's the matter?” he said, irritated.

It was unlike anything she'd smelled before, a cross between rotting leaves in the fall and a steak too long on the grill. In spite of the warmth of the day she felt a chill settle over her. “Stay here,” she said to McLynn.

“What?” He was indignant. “I most certainly will not, I-”

“Stay here,” she repeated in a stronger voice, and walked to the second tent. The smell grew stronger with every step. The breeze came up again as she reached the front flap and she was grateful. The ties resisted her fumbling fingers at first, and then loosened suddenly. The flap fell back, and she stood transfixed, staring at the scene before her.

“Really, Ms. Chouinard, I-” McLynn's words died away as he peered around her shoulder. There was a brief, ghastly pause, and then the sounds of his unsteady footsteps backing up, the thump as his knees hit the ground, the retching sound of him bringing up his breakfast.

Wy felt like joining him.

Like the first tent, this one was olive-green canvas stretched over a metal frame, twenty-five feet on a side. Unlike the first tent, it had no floor, only four sides and a roof to protect the dig from the elements, including the wind, which was why the current steady breeze did not reach inside to cool the air heated by the rising sun, or to dissipate the smell. Wy, desperate to look at anything but what was in front of her, saw that the floor of the tent had been hacked off all the way around just below the seam. The sides were pinned to the ground with metal tent stakes spaced a foot apart. More folding tables lined the tent walls, laden with artifacts recovered from the site set in neat rows, each labeled with date and time and location. A master chart was pinned to one wall, representing the dig and showing the various prior locations of the artifacts and their relation to each other. Coleman lanterns hung from the center pole and all four corners. There was a crude wooden shelf that held various implements, chief among them what looked to Wy like ordinary garden trowels and even more ordinary four-inch paintbrushes. She'd seen McLynn at work with the brushes, one delicate whisk at a time, taking infinite pains to see that no artifact came to harm as it was revealed.

The pits dug into the ground beneath the peak of the tent were neatly sectioned into squares, with string and stakes and tags and numbers identifying each square. Different squares had gone down different levels, some so deep that various layers of soil could be distinguished, some so shallow they looked as if all you had to do was scatter some seed and in a year it would look the same as the rest of the bluff. The deeper the level, the more strata were revealed, a geologic calendar of events. There was even a thin line of volcanic ash, which Don Nelson had told her was from an eruption on the Aleutian Peninsula back when her Yupik ancestors were hunting woolly mammoths with rocks and spears. He'd had a twinkle in his eye as he related these facts, though.

There was no twinkle in his eyes today. He lay sprawled on his back, staring at the green canvas ceiling. His right leg had fallen into one of the ditches, disturbing the string and stakes and tags. There was a pool of something beneath his head and neck, dried brown and sticky-looking.

Something protruded from his mouth. It looked like the hilt of a knife. She blinked at it, trying to focus. It was a homemade knife, she thought numbly, carved from antler, or maybe bone. She couldn't bring herself to look more closely to determine which.

The sight and the smell suddenly became too much to be borne and she stumbled outside and a few steps beyond McLynn, bending forward, hands on her thighs, drawing in great gulps of air.

A few minutes or an hour later, she heard McLynn getting to his feet. Making a great effort, she stood upright and turned to face him.

His face had regained its usual choleric color, and he looked furious. “You know what this means, don't you?”

She knew what it meant, all right.

“It means we'll have to suspend the dig! Years of planning and preparation, years of begging for grants, all lost! Policemen and reporters scrambling around, disturbing the site, who knows what will be destroyed! It means we've lost this summer's work!”

She stared at him, incapable as yet of speech, and the sight seemed to enrage him still further. “It means-” he bellowed, “it means that I'm fucked, is what it means!”

Wy suffered her own realization. No. That wasn't what this meant.

Or it wasn't all it meant.

It meant she was going to have to call Liam.

Once you have smelled the odor of burned flesh, there is no mistaking it for any other. Liam had once had a case in which the perp had killed his wife, wrapped her in Saran Wrap, put her under their trailer and over the next three months doused her body with Clorox whenever the smell interfered withMonday Night Football.Clorox might be hell on wine stains on linen napkins, but it didn't do much to hide the smell of decay; a neighbor had reported it and the smell had led the responding officers directly to the body. All this time the guy had been sleeping in this same trailer, eating in it, showering in it, sitting on his ass and scratching it in his trailer. He had to have been among the olfactorily challenged, a new minority group invented on the spot by the crime scene techs.