Dana Stabenow - Nothing Gold Can Stay

“Accidental?” she suggested.

“Smart-ass,” he said, “but yeah. You lose somebody you love, you want there to be a reason. He can’t have fallen into a glacier, or off a boat, or down a mountain. Death can’t be that random, that irrational, not for a lot of people.”

“Makes sense.”

“Ha, ha. Sit down with Bill sometime, get her to tell you some of the arguments surviving family members have put forward to vacate a judgment of accidental death. They come in two kinds: weird, and weirder. He was pushed into that glacier, he was dumped off that boat, he was tripped down that mountain. He was about to take over the glacier tour company, and the current owner bumped him off. He seduced the boat captain’s daughter, and the captain keelhauled him. The climb leader had designs on his body, and when he wouldn’t put out, cut the rope between them.”

“Sounds like a story.” He shook his head in feigned exasperation at her single-mindedness. She grinned. Their eyes met. The grin faded. “Yes. Well. So you started looking up missing women.”

“Women missing in the Bristol Bay area,” he said. He tilted the chair back, coming solidly up against her, and linked his hands behind his head. She was still for a moment before moving back, but not that much back. His dark hair stood up in a rooster tail from repeated impatient pullings, and he was frowning behind his glasses. “It didn’t hit me until last night, when you were telling us the story about Finn Grant and his lost hunting party, and how one of the women was never found. Interesting, I thought, two women missing in the Bush, same general area, only four years apart. Then I remembered what Wy said about the postmistress’s daughter, and how she was lost eight years ago.”

Jo was skeptical but interested. “Okay, how many of these women missing in the Bristol Bay area have you found?”

He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees, frowning down at his clasped hands. “Seven. Altogether.”

“Seven?” Her tolerant smile and indulgent tone of voice vanished. One quick step had her back at his shoulder. “Show me.”

He was more troubled by his discovery than he was triumphant at having piqued her interest. “I accessed the missing persons records for the judicial district for the last twenty-five years, which is as far back as they’ve got in the data base. Ruby Nunapitchuk eight years ago, Stella Silverthorne five years ago, Rebecca Hanover four days ago.”

“All women.”

“All young women,” he said. “Rebecca Hanover is thirty-two. Ruby Nunapitchuk was seventeen. Stella Silverthorne was twenty-six.”

“Opal was fifty-six.”

“Yeah, she was the oldest by about twenty years.”

“She might not have looked her age, though,” Jo said slowly. “Wait a minute.” She rolled the chair back with him on it and pulled open the drawer. A pad of yellow sticky notes and a pen later, she shoved both back in.

“Just move me out of your way if I’m in it,” he said, ruffled.

She wasn’t listening, staring instead at the map on Wy’s wall. “Okay,” she said, scribbling. One sticky note with a name and a date went on the map at Nenevok Creek, another at Kagati Lake, a third at Weary River. “All right. Who else?”

“I worked backwards, most recent reported disappearances first. Cheryl Montgomery disappeared right off of Four Lake two years ago. She was an experienced backwoodsman, too, someone you wouldn’t think of getting lost.”

Jo inspected the face smiling up at her from the monitor. “She’s lovely.”

“Yeah. And lost.”

“Okay.” A fourth sticky note at Four Lake. “Who else?”

“In 1992, Brandi-with an i -Whitaker was mushing the Kuskokwim 500. She disappeared along with her whole team. Everybody figured they’d fallen into a lead. There wasn’t much fuss; she didn’t have much family and she wasn’t that good a musher.”

A fifth sticky note went up. “Next?”

“In 1991, Ruby Nunapitchuk. Then back four years, and Kristen Anderson goes missing. Fisherman’s wife, out of Koggiling. She was alone at fish camp. When her husband came to pick her up, she was gone. Salmon on the drying racks, but the fire had been cold for at least a day. Again, there is no hint of foul play in the case file. They had a good reputation in Koggiling. Three kids, sober, well liked.”

A sixth sticky note.

“And then as far back as I’ve been so far, 1986, Paulette Gustafson.”

“Same year as Whitaker?”

“Yeah.”

Then it hit her. “Gustafson?”

“Yeah?”

“As in former state senator Ted Gustafson?”

“Yeah.”

“Wy mentioned him. He’s on her mail route. The diabetic.”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe she stayed missing for long.”

“She still is, despite what looks like a full-scale search effort from everyone from the Alaska state troopers to the FBI.”

“The FBI?”

He shrugged. “There are references made to them; I haven’t tracked them down yet.”

“What was she doing here?”

“Visiting high school friends. She was a bit of a rounder, it sounds like. She and a group of her old high school buddies drove up to the One Lake campground, had from what all accounts say was one hell of a party, and when everybody woke up three days later to pack up and go home, Paulette Gustafson was missing.”

“They never found her.”

“Nope.”

A seventh sticky note. Jo stood back and stared at the map, festooned now with what she considered to be entirely too many little yellow flags. “Seven in, what, twelve years?”

“Thirteen. And this is only so far as we know, remember. Only what has made it into the trooper data bank.”

Behind them, Bridget toted up some impossible score and pegged out, and suffered Luke’s mock displeasure with a complacent air.

Jo took a deep, careful breath. “You mean-”

“I mean there might be more,” he said bluntly. “How many little villages out there who never call the troopers if they can possibly help it? How many kids drown in the river without anybody ever knowing, with their people chalking it up to Maniilaq or whatever malevolent spirit happens to be flitting through at that time of year? A lot of these folks haven’t made it into the twentieth century yet, Jo, never mind the twenty-first.”

She stared at the map, her skin cold. “Seven women, all young, all disappeared within sixty miles of one another, all within the space of thirteen years.” She looked at him. “How can no one have noticed?”

He shook his head. “None of them are related. Half of them are from Anchorage. Four, five of them were engaging in high-risk activities, hunting, canoeing, mushing. You’re a reporter, Jo, you’ve written enough stories about this kind of thing, you know it happens.”

She pointed, one at a time. “Paulette Gustafson, 1986. Same year, Kristen Anderson. A five-year gap between her and Ruby Nunapitchuk in 1991. A year after her, Brandi Whitaker. Two years after Brandi, Stella Silverthorne. Three years after Stella, Cheryl Montgomery.”

“And now, two years later, Rebecca Hanover.”

They stared at the map in silence for a moment. The shuffle of cards and the murmur of voices behind them seemed very far away.

She looked at him, her eyes glittering. “Seven times is a serial killer, Jim. We need to talk to Liam.”

He looked past her out the window. “Right about now, he should be busting up the party at Old Man Creek. If Wy managed to get them down without wrecking the plane.”

Jo didn’t even bristle. “Then let’s go see Prince.”

Old Man Creek, September 6

“Where’s Tim?” Wy shoved past Liam into the cabin. Tim was sitting at the table, across from Amelia, one hand full of cards, his mouth open as he stared up at Wy. She felt a sense of overwhelming relief sweep over her, a relaxation of a thrumming, all-consuming tension she didn’t even know she had been experiencing. She didn’t miss a step, she walked straight to him and pulled him up into her arms. “Oh, Tim,” she said, rocking him a little. “Oh, Tim.”