Дана Стейбнау - Spoils of the Dead

“The problem was he didn’t know anything about them at the time he wrote his paper ten years before, after which it was way too late for a man like Hil to climb down. He knew he had to get rid of the artifacts, because if someone found them everything he’d ever done would be called into question. He was about to load up when he heard the kids’ voices from the beach. The Petroff boy was first in the cave and Hil panicked and hit him. He went out after Erik. Erik ran but he held on to his baby fat until puberty burned it off and at ten years he couldn’t run very fast, so Hil caught up with him, gimp and all, and laid him out, too.” He nodded at the cane. “That thing is not just another pretty face.”

Liam didn’t smile.

Jefferson shook his head. “Hil said he thought he’d killed him, Erik. He was terrified when he heard the boy was still alive, and so relieved when he heard he couldn’t remember anything about that day. I think he was always afraid he might, though. I think it was always in his mind.”

“What did he do afterward?”

If possible, Jefferson looked even grimmer. “This ain’t easy to tell and won’t be easy to hear. Hil went back into the cave and he, well, he made the boy’s body fit through that crack in the wall. Garvey told me about it and I don’t know how Hil managed, but he did.”

“Why didn’t he at least drag Erik’s body into the cave?”

“Got spooked, said he heard voices.” Jefferson shrugged. “Probably his imagination. He was scared enough telling the story, I expect he was fucking terrified at the time. He wasn’t ever a man prone to violence, Sergeant, especially since he never in his life had enough muscle to punch a hole through so much as a Kleenex. I reckon the situation just got away from him.”

Pudgy little brat. There had been more than disgust at Erik’s pudginess, Liam thought. The reason Hilary Houten had left Erik where he had fallen was that Houten knew he couldn’t fit him through the crack. Liam willed his imagination away from that image only to be immediately assaulted by another.

The Shawshank hammer. Houten would have used it to break up the boy’s body enough to feed it through the crack. “And then?” was all he said.

Jefferson, eying him with caution, said, “And then he left. He didn’t even take the things he found in the cave with him, which mighta saved Erik’s life that time around. And he never told anyone. Until last night.”

A brief silence. “Where is Mr. Houten now?”

The old fart stared at him. “Didn’t I say? He’s dead. He only had the one drink but it made him sick as a dog afterward. I had to hold his head over the toilet and muscle him into bed. He passed right out.” He shook his head. “He always gets up when he smells the coffee. This morning he didn’t. I went in and he was dead. Already cold. His heart just gave out, I figure. Confession ain’t always good for the soul, you know.” He shifted in his chair. “I brung his body back in the boat, and called Fiona. He’s with her now, waiting on your call.”

He nodded at the cane. “I expect those voodoo techs you law enforcement types got nowadays can find traces of Berglund’s blood on the handle.”

Liam had recorded Jefferson’s entire statement on his phone. He gave it to Ms. Petroff to transcribe. Jefferson balanced a pair of cheaters with purple plastic frames on the very end of his nose, read it through carefully beginning to end, and signed.

He pulled himself to his feet with his walker and resettled the Blewestown Ballers ball cap more firmly on his head, causing the white tufts of hair at the sides to stand straight out perpendicular to the cap’s edge. Unlike Sybilla Karlsen, he’d aged beyond vanity. He stared out Liam’s window and spoke in a reminiscent voice. “You should have seen this place back in the day. Bay was filled with shrimp and salmon and king crab, canneries on both shores, fishing boats all over the damn place. Bars busting out all up and down the streets and young men flush with cash blowing it all on girls and booze. Japanese buyers lining up all the way to Soldotna to buy anything we could pull out of the water.” He looked in the direction of RPetCo’s rig. “And now it’s gonna be oil wells and rigs up and down the Bay, and probably spills, and no self-respecting fish is ever gonna want to spawn in a stream in these parts ever again.”

He turned and looked at Liam. “What happens now?”

Blue Jay Jefferson was a man who took his medicine straight, no chaser. “At best you’re guilty of obstruction of justice. At worst, you’re an accessory after the fact.”

The old man drew himself up as straight as his aged spine would allow and glared at Liam. “Good luck proving that, Sergeant. I didn’t see a goddamn thing and you can’t prove I did. I’m the only witness left alive.”

Liam looked at him for a long moment. “I’ll run it by the judge,” he said, and then he said, “Oh hell. Go home, old man. I know where you live.”

Jefferson had one foot over the threshold when Liam said, “Tom.”

The old man looked over his shoulder.

“Why did you tell me? You didn’t have to.”

Blue Jay Jefferson tugged fiercely at the bill of his cap, pulling it even tighter to his head and causing his remaining hairs to make him look even more like the Scarecrow after the Wizard stuffed his head with brains. “I told you,” he said. “I didn’t know about the kids.”

“How do you feel about all this?” Wy said that evening. They were curled up on the couch, watching the mountains turn an even darker blue and the Bay itself fade to black.

“Kind of pissed off, you want to know the truth,” Liam said. “Two murders, one attempt, and the perp dies on me before I get to charge him.”

“Anticlimactic,” she said.

“Kinda.”

“But nobody shot at you,” she said.

“And I didn’t have to jump out of any airplanes.”

“Or jump out of any boats.”

“Or fall down any glaciers. I never even took my sidearm out of the glove compartment. Am I still in Alaska or what?”

“And you didn’t mess up another uniform.”

“There is that.”

She raised her head to look at him. “Are you ever going to put one on again?”

Twenty-One

Sunday, September 15

THEY WERE SUMMONED TO TEA WITH Sybilla the following Sunday in her room at Sunset Heights. Having been given a heads up by Liz, Wy was wearing the only dress she owned, a sunny yellow sleeveless cotton sheath with a scoop neck. She’d bought it to wear at her college graduation, mostly to make her parents happy, and worn it a second time at her wedding. It was a little wrinkled because upon seeing her in it Liam had immediately tried to get her out of it again.

Liam, because what the hell and anyway he no longer owned a suit, came in full regalia, light blue shirt over dark blue pants with the gold stripe down the legs, dark blue tie, and the original babe magnet, his Smokey hat to top off the ensemble. He left the utility belt at home and the sidearm in the glove compartment.

“You’re strutting,” Wy said when he came out of the bedroom.

“Nonsense,” he said, and squared away his tie.

Sybilla’s was a surprisingly pleasant room, spacious with a large window that actually opened. It was stuffed with old-fashioned furniture and knickknacks. The walls were covered with photographs, including several studio portraits of Sybilla in her various primes.

“You look like a movie star, Sybilla,” Wy said, staring at one of them. The movie-star version was wearing one of those old timey velvet, V-neck dresses barely held up by the shoulders. Sybilla had turned to look directly into the lens of the camera. She was red-lipped and smiling, her brows two straight black slashes, her hair a dusky cloud.