Dana Stabenow - A Grave Denied

Dawn came far too early for everyone.

Dr. Millicent Nebeker McClanahan ignored Kate to focus on Johnny. “Yes?” she said encouragingly. It was the next morning. They were up on the Step, a narrow ledge between valley and plateau that supported a cluster of prefabricated buildings and a skinny airstrip that stood in constant danger of either sliding over the side or being overrun by mountain hemlock. This was Park headquarters for the U.S. Park Service, and they were just down the hall of the man who ran it and who was standing next to Kate at respectful attention. Dan O’Brian was a boyish-faced, burly man with bristly red hair and blue eyes so innocent they aroused instant suspicion in those meeting him for the first time.

“Don’t bat those baby blues at me, young man,” Dr. McClanahan told him.

Dan, somewhere in his late forties, said meekly, “No, ma’am.”

“I know every thought that’s going on in that intellectually challenged pea-sized organ you call a brain,” Dr. McClanahan said, not without relish, “and there isn’t a one of them worth repeating.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Dan had the temerity to grin at her.

She laughed. “I see you’re listening as hard as you always do.” She turned back to Johnny. “Well?”

Dr. Millicent Nebeker McClanahan was five-eleven, maybe 130 pounds, with short, thick white hair indifferently cut, and large gray eyes. She wore jeans, a white turtleneck beneath a ratty fleece pullover that had once been dark green, no makeup, and no jewelry except for small plain gold hoop earrings and the worn gold band on the fourth finger of her right hand. She was constantly in motion even when she was standing still, tucking hair behind an ear, tugging on her earlobe, stuffing her hands in her pockets, taking them out again, fiddling with her collar, shifting from one foot to the other as if impatient to be on the move. She didn’t quite give off sparks, but one imagined she might if any attempt was made to restrain her.

She was a geologist specializing in glaciers, and by good or ill fortune was currently headquartering on the Step as she completed a study for which, Dan informed Kate in a low voice, she seemed to have unlimited funding because she gave every indication of settling in for the summer, and Dan had been instructed by his masters in D.C. to give her every assistance.

The thing was, Johnny was seriously into it. He hung on every word that fell from Dr. McClanahan’s lips. He followed her forefinger intently as it traced a line of glacial moraines on a map. He asked questions. He should have been in school but had insisted on accompanying Kate to the Step, a place in the Park he had yet to visit, and now Kate was glad she had acquiesced.

Dr. McClanahan answered him sensibly, as one equal to another, with no hint of “Run away and play, little boy” in her manner. She was currently describing the state of glaciers in general globally and in Alaska in particular, and Johnny said, “That’s why we’re here, Dr. McClanahan, we-”

She smiled and said, “Why don’t you just call me Millicent, Johnny.”

He flushed with pleasure. “Sure. Millicent.” He stumbled a little over the pronunciation.

She laughed. “See if Millie works better.”

He grinned. “Okay, Millie. Anyway, like I was saying, that’s why we’re here. We need to talk to someone who knows about Grant Glacier.”

“Grant Glacier, hmmmm.” Dr. McClanahan tilted her head to examine the map through the half-glasses perched at the tip of her long thin nose. The map covered most of one wall of the conference room and it was a large room. It was done to a 1/ 50,000 scale and detailed down to the shallowest bend of the smallest creek. Kate located her creek without difficulty, only to be reminded of the ruin on its bank. She wrenched her attention back to Dr. McClanahan, who was pointing at tongues of white on the map and naming them off one at a time. “Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, here we are, Grant Glacier. Hmmm, yes. That was the glacier that thrust forward last summer, wasn’t it?”

She tossed the question over her shoulder at Dan, and Dan snapped to attention. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

She grinned. “Do you keep a personal log of Park events?”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” He escorted them back to the cubbyhole that was his office and selected from a shelf a daily diary the twin of Bobby’s. He paged through it. “Here we are,” he said. “Suddenly, last summer, on June twenty-eighth to be exact, Grant Glacier was noticed to be going the wrong way.”

Dr. McClanahan’s nose twitched. “Any seismic activity in the area prior to the event?”

Dan paged back. “I don’t think-oh, wait a minute. Yeah, there was a shaker that week. But-”

“What?”

“Well, it was four days before. And it was just a baby, five point two according to the Tsunami Warning Center.”

Dr. McClanahan’s nose twitched again. “Hmmm.”

Dan waited. When she made no further noise he said, “Hmmm what?”

“We’ve discussed my paper,” she said.

“You’ve discussed your paper,” he said, “I’ve just been towed unwillingly in the wake of your fanaticism.”

“Nicely put,” she said, complimentarily. “However, enthusiasm would be a more apt description.”

“I was actually thinking zealotry,” he said dryly.

They laughed, and it occurred to Kate that Dan’s social life had been settled on for this summer. She cleared her throat. “So who reported it?”

Dan looked at her, startled, as if only now remembering she was in the room, and his ears got red. “Who,” he muttered, looking back at the diary, “right. Um, yeah.” He flipped back and forth. “Okay. A bunch of ice climbers were on a three-week camping trip up the valley. I think a couple of them were actually on the glacier with axes and pitons when it started moving forward. Scared the hell out of them, especially as they were camped out on the edge of the lake at the mouth. They said it sounded like the world was coming apart beneath their feet.” He showed them the quote. “Anyway, they got the hell off the glacier, struck camp, and headed for Niniltna. George dropped in on his way home from flying them back to Anchorage.”

“When did it go back into recession?” Dr. McClanahan said.

“I don’t know the exact date,” Dan said, and at least appeared crushed when Dr. McClanahan looked disappointed. “I checked on it as often as I could, and I alerted the geologists at the University of Alaska, but no one was all that interested. It wasn’t like when Hubbard thrust forward. Tidewater glaciers are more interesting than piedmont, I guess. The Grant wasn’t cutting off any seals from the open ocean. And let’s face it, the Grant is pretty small potatoes compared to the Hubbard.”

Dr. McClanahan nodded. “And it’s not like watching glaciers is your only job.”

“I got George to drop a flag on the face and mark the position on his GPS. Whenever he had a paying passenger for Tok, he’d do a flyover and take a bearing on the flag.”

“Oh, excellent!” Dr. McClanahan said.

“When did he report it was going into recession again?” Kate said, losing patience.

“Oh.” Dan’s ears got red again and he dove back into the diary. “Uh, yeah, here it is. He first told me it looked like it had started back in late September. Could have been moving slow enough that he didn’t notice it until then.”

“How far did the flag move down altogether?” Johnny said, and earned an approving smile from Dr. McClanahan.

“From the time he dropped it until the first snowfall when he couldn’t find it again, down over five thousand feet.”

“Going on a mile,” Johnny said, awed.