Dana Stabenow - A Grave Denied

“Don’t forget, last September was pretty warm. A lot of that was melt off.”

“Did you tell anyone that it had started receding again?” Kate said.

Dan shrugged. “Like I said. After the initial excitement, people weren’t that interested. I kept track in the diary until the snow covered up the flag and George couldn’t take any more readings.”

So no one would have known that the glacier wasn’t still moving forward, Kate thought. And someone who wasn’t glacier ept might have thought the mouth of a glacier a great place to hide a body for a long, long time.

“Let’s take a look,” Dr. McClanahan said.

“She needs to be studying something that moves faster than a glacier,” Kate said, panting.

Johnny was too winded even to nod.

Dr. Millicent Nebeker McClanahan bounded up to the mouth of Grant Glacier like a mountain goat, no hands, hopping nimbly from berg to berg. Her voice floated behind her as Kate and Johnny tried to keep up. “You want to be careful near the mouth of a glacier, especially at this time of year. The face may calve at any moment as soon as it begins to warm up and the insulating layer of winter snow melts off.”

Kate looked up at the wall of ice in front of which they were currently standing. “Johnny, maybe you better go back to the truck.” That was where Dan had stayed, to lean against the grille and watch them through binoculars, the grin on his face visible even from this distance.

Johnny shook his head. “She’s here, and besides, it calved when we were here the other day,” he said, and went after his new hero.

“It what?” Kate said, staring after him.

“What’s the matter, Shugak, can’t keep up?” Dan yelled.

Kate promised retribution with a look and heard him laughing. She followed Johnny, and she did use her hands. By the time she got there, McClanahan and Johnny had vanished inside the mouth. “Johnny, damn it,” she said through clenched teeth, and went after him.

It was dark and cold in the ice cave, and noisy with dripping, trickling, running, and rushing water. It felt like being inside a frozen waterfall that was going to melt away completely at any moment. The tall figure of the geologist and the smaller figure of the boy were standing in the center of the sloping floor of the long narrow cave, following the beam from the flashlight the geologist held as it played over the ice. It wasn’t clear or even white, but dark with the debris it had picked up on its millennial journey down the mountain.

The gravel crunching beneath her feet had been crushed and rolled to a smooth uniform size. Kate tried not to think about the same thing happening to her. “Is this a good idea, Millie?” she said.

“Probably not,” Millie said, not moving.

Kate repressed an urge to get the hell out of there. She would not be outdone in foolhardiness, even if it meant dying in the collapse of a glacier.

“Where was the body?” Millie asked Johnny.

He walked to where the ice left the gravel and began to curve overhead. “Right here.”

“Right in the middle,” Millie said. She knelt down and examined the ice directly behind the spot Johnny indicated in excruciatingly minute detail. Kate tried not to shift from foot to foot. Catching who killed Len Dreyer and burned down her cabin seemed suddenly less compelling.

“The body was upright?”

“Uh-huh.”

“With his back to the wall?”

“Uh-huh.” Johnny’s voice sounded tinny against the surrounding ice.

“Hmmm, yes,” McClanahan said, peering and prodding at the ice. “Yes, well, I think that’s all we’re going to find here.”

She got to her feet and clicked off the flashlight. Stygian gloom fell like a blow. Kate wasn’t especially claustrophobic and even liked the dark, but when she felt rather than saw McClanahan brush by she nearly levitated off the ground. She waited until they were up the slope of gravel and back out into the sunshine before she trusted her voice enough to ask, “What did we find there?”

McClanahan propped one foot on a chunk of ice, clasped her hands on her knee, and frowned down at them. “It’s the first week of May. From anecdotal reports we know that the glacier stopped thrusting forward in September of last year. My guess would be that the cave has not altered in any substantial way since last fall. The winter temperatures and the insulating layer of winter snowfall would have maintained the interior surface of the cave. Further.” Very much the learned lecturer condensing specialized information for consumption by an amateur audience, she held up one finger to forestall Kate’s comment. “Had the body been placed there this spring, the difference in temperature between the ice and the body would inevitably have left some mark.”

“An outline?” Johnny said.

Kate, remembering the sound of melting water that had surrounded her in the cave, said, “It wouldn’t have melted?”

McClanahan considered this. “Given the difference in temperature between solid ice and human flesh, no matter how dead, and with the temperature outside the cave steadily rising, I believe I would have been able to detect some mark. If, on the other hand, the body had been placed there late last fall, with temperatures already falling steadily, perhaps also with the body already chilled itself, very little impression would have been left, easily erased during spring melt off.”

“So, bottom line,” Kate said. “Was the body placed there last fall or this spring?”

“One cannot say for sure,” McClanahan said. “Or at least this one can’t. But my best guess would be earlier than this spring. Well before breakup, let’s say. How deep was last winter’s snowfall?”

“Why?”

“How long would it take given this spring’s ambient temperatures to melt that much snow, so that the cave would be revealed and someone could deposit a body inside it?”

Kate looked back at the open slash of the cave mouth at the foot of the wide, dirty wall of ice, and had an unwelcome vision of the body of Len Dreyer propped up against the back of the ice cave, sightless eyes staring toward the snow-filled entrance, waiting out the winter until spring and Johnny’s class came to find him. “So, last fall,” she said.

“It’s only a guess,” Millie said, “but I’d say yes.”

Plus, so far no one reported seeing Dreyer after October, Kate thought. Bobby might have been the last one to see him alive.

“What’s your paper going to be about, Millie?” Johnny said.

“ ‘The Effect of Seismic Events and Meteorological Transformation on Glacial Geomorphology in Interior Alaska,”“ McClanahan replied promptly.

Johnny gulped. “What does that mean?”

“You know about earthquake faults?”

“Sure. Everybody in Alaska knows about earthquake faults.”

“You know about the Alaska-Aleutian megathrust subduction zone?”

“Uh, where the two main faults butt up against each other?”

“Not bad,” McClanahan said. “There may be hope for you, Mr. Morgan. My paper examines what effect that zone may or may not have on the thrust and retreat of Alaskan glaciers. With a sidebar on the weather, including global warming.”

“Oh,” Johnny said, and hesitated. “Maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

“Well, maybe I could read it?”

She laughed and cuffed his shoulder. “Sure. I’ll even give you an English/geology dictionary to help you in the translation.”

At that moment the entire face of Grant Glacier seemed to shudder and shift. A second later an immense boom! rocked them back and a piece of ice the size of Gibraltar came crashing down to shatter into a million shards all over the entrance of the ice cave. A splinter whizzed by Kate’s face, and to her everlasting shame she yelped and ducked out of the way.