Дана Стейбнау - Spoils of the Dead

“You realize Joshua Petroff and Erik Berglund were killed thirty years apart?”

Brillo sounded testy. “I can read a report.”

“Are you sure the wound on Berglund’s head wasn’t from the old injury?”

“What the hell, Campbell? I told you the old injury had healed to the point I could barely tell where it was, let alone what caused it. Oh, and if you could get your other girlfriend the hell out of my hair, I’d be grateful.”

“My other—”

“The scribbler. She’s been on me about this PM the whole goddamn week. She annoys me even more than you do and that’s saying something.” Brillo hung up.

Liam let the phone drop into its cradle and picked his jaw up off the floor. He looked down at the square.

Couldn’t get around without a cane.

But Blue Jay Jefferson had been with him that night.

As if Liam’s thought had conjured him out of the ether, the door to his office opened and Blue Jay Jefferson thumped in with his walker. He didn’t look happy. He was carrying Hilary Houten’s cane and he dropped it on Liam’s desk. It knocked the phone out of its cradle and then the entire phone crashed to the floor.

Over his shoulder Ms. Petroff said, “I’m sorry, sir, I tried to stop him.”

“It’s all right, Ms. Petroff. As you were.”

She disappeared without closing the door.

Liam picked up the phone and set it back on the desk. There was a chip out of the handset but there was still a dial tone. He put it back in its cradle and looked up. “You have something you want to tell me, Mr. Jefferson?”

“I didn’t know about the kids,” Jefferson said, and sat down.

“Hil came back across the Bay with me after the Chamber do,” Jefferson said. His face was set, his mouth a straight line.

“That afternoon Garvey Halloran came over on his Bayliner. He’s a volunteer for the fire department, and he was there when you pulled that skeleton out of the cave.” Some emotion must have crossed Liam’s face because Jefferson snorted. “Garvey went to school with my kids. They’re all living Outside now so Garvey checks in on me. Since he’s a first responder, I get all the news first and firsthand. Ain’t no secrets in a small town.”

There were no secrets in Alaska period, Liam thought. “Mr. Jefferson—”

“It’s Tom,” Jefferson said. “That Blue Jay crap got hung on me by the newspapers, and it sure as hell ain’t Mr. Jefferson. Let me finish, Sergeant, and then I’ll answer any questions you got.” Jefferson thought about the ramifications of that all-encompassing statement for a moment and added, “Mostly.”

“All right.”

“So, Garvey told us about finding the skeleton.” Jeff shook his head and sighed. “I never see a man go so white. I don’t think Garvey noticed. Leastways he didn’t say anything. After Garvey left I tackled Hil about it. He wouldn’t say nothing at first. For days he was practically mute. I don’t think he was sleeping, like at all. Then last night I poured myself my usual sun over the yardarm tot and Hil asked me to pour him one, too.” Jefferson fixed Liam with a piercing yellow eye, his resemblance to a bald eagle even more pronounced. “Understand, Sergeant, I’ve known Hil for forty years and I never see him take a drink. He never said why, he just never did. I always figured him for an alkie, or maybe just a teetotaler.” He shrugged. “Didn’t matter to me. But last night he asks for a drink. So I pour him one and we sit down in front of the fireplace to plan out how to fix the world like we always do. He takes a gulp and his hand is shaking like a seven-point-four and he coughs and chokes and wheezes, and then by god, he takes another.

“And then, Sergeant, he starts to talk.” Jefferson settled back in the chair, his face grim. “Only thing you gotta understand about Hil, Sergeant, is that paper he wrote forty years ago on human settlement in the Bay made him. He got wrote up everywhere, he was on television when most of the people watching couldn’t have understood one word in ten he said, he won some shovelbum award. They give him that.”

He pointed at the cane. Liam followed his eyes and for the first time saw the tiny rectangle of brass screwed to the handle’s brace. It was inscribed with Houten’s name and a date and the words “For Distinguished Archeological Achievement.”

“It never left his hand after that, whether his arthritis was giving him a bad time or not,” Jefferson said. “His reputation was made and all the resource companies wanted him on retainer for his bona fide expert opinion on how none of the places they wanted to dig or drill would have any impact on the Alaska Native culture or ever had any importance in Alaska Native history. He never had to do another lick of real work, just opine. Hil was fucking great with opinions that sounded authoritative enough to shut down every greenie and tree hugger who raised a voice in opposition.” He shook his head. “He was something back in the day, before he got old. Before we all got old.”

“So when Erik Berglund came along this year, promising to refute all of Houten’s findings…”

Jefferson gave a curt not. “I figured it was professional jealousy, and hell, look at the two of them. One was on his way out, old, obstinate, opinionated, had no truck with or respect for the Sugpiaq. The other grew up on the other side of the Bay smack damn in the middle of them, young, smart, familiar with all the new scientific techniques or what the fuck ever, had a relationship with UNESCO and was threatening to pitch them on making the Bay a World Heritage Site or some goddamn such.” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t think there’s a hope in hell of that ever happening and I don’t think Erik did, either, but it’s what they was arguing about at Gabe’s party. Man was nice enough to give us a front row seat to the next blockbuster months before anyone else was going to get to see it and these two yahoos are ruining the party. I think Erik just wanted to poke the bear. They shut up when I went over to shut them up.”

“And after the party?”

Jefferson’s jaw tightened. “Hil wanted to wait for Erik to come out so he could finish the argument. Nothing I could say to talk him out of it. By the time Erik come out everyone else had gone. Hil got out of my pickup and started yelling. Erik laughed at him and turned his back and walked in the direction of the trail head. Hil went after him, thumping along with his cane. It was dark enough by then that I give it only a couple of minutes before I went after him. I found him standing alone at the trail head, leaning on that cane and vibrating like a shaker table on a gold dredge. Erik was nowhere to be seen. Hil said he’d gone down the trail, was going to sleep at the dig. So we went back to the harbor and bunked on my boat, and went home the next morning.”

He looked at Liam, defiance in every line of his face. “You’ll notice I never told you about that when you asked what went on at the party.”

“I noticed.”

“Never would have, either.”

“No.”

Something about Liam’s certainty that Blue Jay Jefferson did not snitch on his friends seemed to put heart into the old fart. “And then last night,” he said, and stopped.

“Houten started talking,” Liam said when it appeared Jefferson needed a prompt.

Jefferson took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah. All about his fucking monograph and how Erik had been trying to ruin his reputation since he was a fat little brat.”

Liam started putting the pieces together in his mind and almost knew what Jefferson was going to say next.

“Hil found the cave thirty years ago. Just like Erik he figured out that the old folks used that spur of rock for a dock. He found the cave—he got around better back then—and he found the artifacts inside it.