Dana Stabenow - Nothing Gold Can Stay

“Maybe somebody else saw him.”

“Maybe somebody else did,” he said.

They borrowed a couple of four-wheelers from Leonard and set off. It took them the rest of the morning and all of the afternoon, following the map Leonard had made for them. Everyone was shocked at Opal’s murder. No one had seen anyone strange. Very few had alibis, but then very few had motive, either.

Dusty Moore was a man in his fifties with a much younger Yupik wife and five children under the age of eight, all of whom swore that Dusty had been right there with them every day since coming back from a supply run to Newenham in May. He didn’t deny wanting the postmaster job, but in an eerie echo of Leonard’s own words said, “Jesus, who would want it this way?”

He escorted them firmly to the edge of his property and left them there.

“Hell,” Prince said.

“Hell,” Liam agreed. “Well, I guess they can’t all be easy.”

“If this yo-yo-”

“I know. And chances are we can’t do anything unless and until he hits again.”

Prince’s lips were tight. “I don’t like it.”

“What do you want to do, Prince? Set out across country? In what direction? We looked everywhere on the Nunapitchuks’ homestead for a trail and didn’t find squat, except for game trails. We can’t follow them all. Maybe we could bring in some dogs, pick up a trail that way. Chances of that are, oh, maybe a trillion to one, and it’s even odds they’ll track down the local grizzly first, which would be bad for the dogs and worse for us.”

He stopped, ashamed of having lost his temper. The Nunapitchuks seemed like nice people: hardworking, self-sufficient, capable, intelligent, everything he admired. He didn’t like the thought that he was about to let them down. He sighed. “We won’t close the file. The M.E. will be able to tell us about the weapon, and the prints will go into the system. We’ll put out a bulletin, circulate it among all the air taxi services in the Bay area in case he tries to fly out and gives himself away. Of course, he’ll have to give himself away because we don’t have a clue as to what he looks like. He could be a woman for all we know, or a Texas horned toad, or a little green man from Mars.” He felt himself getting angry all over again, and took a deep breath and blew it out explosively.

“Canneries,” Prince said. “They could pass out copies to their fishermen. In case he tried to hitch a ride downriver.”

“Most of the canneries are closed for the winter,” Liam said shortly.

“Oh. Right.”

“Shit,” Liam said.

They thanked Leonard for the loan of the four-wheelers, made vague noises when he asked them what they had discovered, and got the hell out of there.

The Cessna 185 had been in the air less than twenty minutes when the call came in. Liam, as usual preoccupied with holding the plane up in the air by sheer effort of will, didn’t hear it until Prince turned up the volume. “This is eight-two Victor November to the distress call, say again?”

A calm, confident female drawl repeated, “This is Alaska Airlines one-three-three calling any small aircraft in the area of Nenevok Creek.”

Prince and Liam exchanged glances, and simultaneously looked down at their watches. It was seven minutes past six. “What’s the last flight into Anchorage?” Liam said.

Prince keyed the mike while Liam looked up through the windshield, trying to locate the other plane. “Alaska one-three-three, this is Cessna eight-two Victor November. I am twenty minutes out of Kagati Lake on a heading for Newenham. How may I assist you?”

“Eight-two Victor November, this is Alaska one-three-three, I have received a distress call from someone in Nenevok Creek. I repeat, I have intercepted a distress call from Nenevok Creek. The caller did not identify himself.”

“Alaska one-three-three, eight-two Victor November, did he identify the problem?”

“Eight-two Victor November, Alaska one-three-three, he said someone had been shot and that they need help now.”

Prince looked at Liam, who was already unfolding the map. She watched his forefinger locate Kagati Lake and trace a line south-southeast, until it stopped at Nenevok Creek.

He looked up. Her face was flushed, her eyes were bright and it looked as if her short dark hair was curling into even tighter curls. “Go,” he said.

She stood the plane on one wingtip and keyed the mike at the same time. “Alaska Airlines one-three-three, this is Alaska State Trooper Diana Prince on board eight-two Victor November. We’ll take it from here. Eight-two Victor November out.”

Nuklunek Bluff, September 2

“Well, hell,” Wy said grumpily. “I wasn’t that late.”

The fishermen at the lodge had been packed and waiting for pickup. She had deposited them in Newenham, refueled and flown straight back to the overgrown strip on the edge of the bluff. She found the camp easily, festooned with tents and a card table and bagged moose and caribou haunches, and congratulated herself on the fact that it was barely half an hour past the time she had said she would be there.

She climbed out and no one was there. She walked to the camp and it appeared deserted. She was confused until she saw the two cases of beer, one empty and the other halfway there.

“Well, hell,” she said again, this time with a long, depressed sigh. Her least favorite thing in the world was flying a drunk. They were prone to airsickness, which did the interior of the plane no good at all and her frame of mind even less. John and Teddy were probably out helling around somewhere under the influence, using each other for target practice or some other damn fool thing.

It was odd, though, and unlike them to leave such a big meat stash unprotected. There was enough here to feed both families until the first salmon hit fresh water.

It was also a first-class bear magnet. She rummaged around in the back of the Cessna for the shotgun. She’d wait until a half hour before dark, that was it. If they didn’t show, she would leave the meat to the mercy of any wandering critter who happened by, two- or four-legged.

She propped her back against a boulder and closed her eyes against the slanting rays of the lowering sun. The rock radiated heat soaked up during the day, and she felt no need for the jacket in the plane.

She thought of last night. The Nunapitchuks had a small cabin out back of the homestead, one with four bunks they used when family showed up to stay for a while. They had given them sleeping bags and pillows with fresh-smelling cases and left them alone. She loved making love to Liam, in a hard, narrow bunk, in the shower, on the bank of the Nushagak River, it didn’t matter, she loved making love to him. She’d read or heard something somewhere, something about when a couple was going through a bad time, the sex helped keep things together until they came out the other end, and that when the relationship was good anyway, it was just the icing on the cake.

That was what it was like with Liam, icing on the cake. She smiled without opening her eyes.

She liked to talk to him, too, about everything and nothing. He kept up most of the time, but sometimes he was way ahead of her, and she liked that too; she didn’t think she could live with someone who wasn’t as smart as she was. She liked him with Tim, friendly, not pushy, letting Tim get to know him at Tim’s own pace. It was important for Tim to learn that all men don’t hit.

She liked it that Liam read recreationally. The does-he-read test was the only test she required the men she allowed into her life to pass. She didn’t care if they were tall, short, fat, thin, old, young, she didn’t care if they were Yupik from Bethel or Hindu from India-or Caucasian from Anchorage-they had to read. She didn’t care what they read, they didn’t even have to read the same things she did (a good thing because she read fiction, mostly, and Liam read non, mostly), but if they didn’t read, they were out.