Eddie went person to person, making excuses for my drunk condition, glancing back at me and shaking his head occasionally, Poor Joe, telling them that I’d been babbling “crazy theories.” I held the blackness at bay but at all times Karen stood offstage. People moved around me like marionettes, or two-dimensional images. I felt crushing grief ready to flood in. I saw a black void stretching into the future.
You brought her here. You could have stayed out of things. You were even ordered to stay out.
“Joe? I saw Karen at the high school. She was coughing. I thought she might be getting sick. I’m so sorry.”
Bruce Friday had brought over a kitchen chair and reversed it and straddled it so his arms lay on top. He was drinking a Coke. He emitted a slightly moldy odor, a guy who lives alone, for years, who uses mothballs instead of a washing machine. His arms looked thin beneath his shirt, skinny impressions, but close up the muscles in his wrists and hands were powerful. Scarred. Corded. I saw white patches on his cheek, discolorations where frostbite had healed over the years.
The Longhorn hut was decorated more expensively than the government one in which I resided. The furniture was plusher, the paint fresh. The kitchenware was top of the line — restaurant quality, not Army surplus, like ours. The photos on walls, unlike personal momentos in other huts, were corporate: a shot of their gigantic floating Arctic drill rig, the Bowhead, exploring off Greenland; a shot of Dave and Deborah shaking hands with Alaska’s former Democratic senator, on this base; a shot of one of their seismic ships off Arctic Russia, escorted by a Russian icebreaker — Longhorn had drilled there; a shot of Merlin, Deborah, and the secretary of Homeland Security, on the bridge of a U.S. icebreaker, poring over a nautical chart.
“You talk to Karen?” I asked Bruce.
Head shake. “I told that Army captain, Hess, that I saw her at the high school. Seems I confirmed what someone else already told him. By the way, Hess is looking for you.”
“It’s not like I’m hiding, you know.”
“Karen was with a child at the school. A little kid. I saw the kid take her hand, lead her out to the parking lot.”
“Boy kid or girl?”
“Sorry. I saw them from the back.”
“Parka color? Pink would be a clue.”
“Dark green, I think. Or maybe it was blue.”
“Did you see where they went in the parking lot?”
“I wish I did. I stayed in the building.”
“Hey, Bruce, I wanted to ask about your polar bears…”
He looked surprised that I’d switched the subject to this, but he gave his usual answer. “They’re not my bears. They’re Earth’s, Joe. The living bounty of all.”
“I wondered all summer. You want to block off their territory, block development where they live, right?”
“They’re dying out, Joe. They need protection. They need a federal designation, an off-limits habitat. Where they hunt. Where they breed. Where they raise cubs.”
“And if their habitat was protected, how much exactly — how many miles of coast — would that include?”
“All the way across, Joe!”
“Wouldn’t that stop any new pipeline construction, sea to shore?”
“I hope so,” Bruce Friday said, rising to leave.
“By the way, Bruce, you ever find any bears out on the tundra this year, dead from rabies when you autopsy them?”
Bruce Friday stopped, turned, stared at me.
“Rabies? No. Foxes get it mostly. In bears it’s possible, but almost unknown.”
“Join me for a drink, Merlin. You look like you need it.”
“I don’t drink, Joe. You know that.”
“Scared of a little vodka, Chief? Come on. One sip.”
“I haven’t had a drink since I was nineteen. I hate the taste.”
“Merlin, we may have missed something at that cabin.”
He grew very still. “What?”
“Well, five of us get out of the chopper, see? Eddie and I go into the cabin right away, see? And your deputies split up and go out by themselves and then come back and tell us they found nothing. But we never checked what they said.” I smiled. I hoped it was a shrewd, suspicious smile.
Merlin stood up. Color blotched his powerful face.
“You’re saying a cop was involved? Covered things up?”
“You told me that Clay Qaqulik didn’t share his theories with you. You said he worked alone. Why would one of your own people do that? Maybe he didn’t trust you, Merlin. You personally.”
Merlin’s eyes narrowed, then he sighed. “You’re upset, Joe. I understand.”
I shrugged. I took a long drink. I drank all my water. I said, more aggressively, “Eddie and I were in the cabin. We couldn’t see outside. Luther took the ATV out on the tundra. What did he do there? You went through Clay’s pockets. I’m upset? You think I give a damn about your sensibilities? It never stops! Poor us! Always victims! Don’t give me that poor-us shit.”
Merlin’s face loomed very close, so I could see the pores, the gap between two lower teeth, black hairs in his nose, the half-healed scar of a shaving cut on his chin.
“You are drunk.” I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. “Clay and I grew up together,” he said gently.
“Yeah, yeah, family, all of us brothers. Merlin, who’s the guy you arrest half the time in killings? The husband. The brother. Why not a cousin? With a bank account in Oahu? Pipeline money. You have one of those accounts, Merlin? Dave here pays you on the side? Is that it?”
“Stay away from the office,” he said. “I don’t think it is such a good idea for us to work together anymore.”
Merlin picked up his hat and left.
Mikael Grandy had his arm in a sling, and his shirt billowed out due to bulky bandages beneath the fabric, wrapping his rib cage. He approached gingerly. I was surprised he would come near me, surprised to see more grief and guilt than pain on his stupidly handsome face.
“I fell in love with her. I never met anyone like her before. She was strong, and she was loyal. She loved you. She told me that. She told me because I, uh… I confessed how I felt. All she could talk about half the time was you. How you’d buy a little house. How you’d live back east. How she wanted kids one day, but not yet. I’m not going to press charges against you.”
“Why are you telling me this, Mikael?”
“I need to tell somebody.”
“Right. Plus, your film of her death will make your show a big hit, huh? You’ll tell the story of the Marine savage who broke your ribs at conferences. You’ll tell the story when you win your gold statuette next year. You’ll say, I felt sorry for Rush. I couldn’t take that poor Marine to court.”
He did not reply. I saw truth in his face, a flush, but also something deeper resembling genuine sympathy.
I asked, “Did your family really own part of the North Slope way back when, Mikael?”
“We would have been millionaires today.” He winced when he shrugged. “But my grandfather used to tell me, in Brooklyn, millionaires have money, but this does not make them happy people.”
“What would you be today, if Russia had kept Alaska? Duke Mikael? Count Mikael?”
He cradled the hurt arm. “Duke.”
“Where was the land your family would have owned?”
“I’m not exactly sure. But the communists would have wiped away our claims anyway, even if Russia had kept Alaska.”
“You never even went looking for the land? I mean, you’re here! You didn’t even want to see it?”