A Grave Denied

Dr. McClanahan nodded. “And it’s not like watching glaciers is your only job.”

“I got George to drop a flag on the face and mark the position on his GPS. Whenever he had a paying passenger for Tok, he’d do a flyover and take a bearing on the flag.”

“Oh, excellent!” Dr. McClanahan said.

“When did he report it was going into recession again?” Kate said, losing patience.

“Oh.” Dan’s ears got red again and he dove back into the diary. “Uh, yeah, here it is. He first told me it looked like it had started back in late September. Could have been moving slow enough that he didn’t notice it until then.”

“How far did the flag move down altogether?” Joh

“From the time he dropped it until the first snowfall when he couldn’t find it again, down over five thousand feet.”

“Going on a mile,” Joh

“Don’t forget, last September was pretty warm. A lot of that was melt off.”

“Did you tell anyone that it had started receding again?” Kate said.

Dan shrugged. “Like I said. After the initial excitement, people weren’t that interested. I kept track in the diary until the snow covered up the flag and George couldn’t take any more readings.”

So no one would have known that the glacier wasn’t still moving forward, Kate thought. And someone who wasn’t glacier ept might have thought the mouth of a glacier a great place to hide a body for a long, long time.

“Let’s take a look,” Dr. McClanahan said.

“She needs to be studying something that moves faster than a glacier,” Kate said, panting.

Joh

Dr. Millicent Nebeker McClanahan bounded up to the mouth of Grant Glacier like a mountain goat, no hands, hopping nimbly from berg to berg. Her voice floated behind her as Kate and Joh

Kate looked up at the wall of ice in front of which they were currently standing. “Joh

Joh

“It what?” Kate said, staring after him.

“What’s the matter, Shugak, can’t keep up?” Dan yelled.

Kate promised retribution with a look and heard him laughing. She followed Joh

It was dark and cold in the ice cave, and noisy with dripping, trickling, ru

The gravel crunching beneath her feet had been crushed and rolled to a smooth uniform size. Kate tried not to think about the same thing happening to her. “Is this a good idea, Millie?” she said.

“Probably not,” Millie said, not moving.

Kate repressed an urge to get the hell out of there. She would not be outdone in foolhardiness, even if it meant dying in the collapse of a glacier.

“Where was the body?” Millie asked Joh

He walked to where the ice left the gravel and began to curve overhead. “Right here.”

“Right in the middle,” Millie said. She knelt down and examined the ice directly behind the spot Joh

“The body was upright?”

“Uh-huh.”

“With his back to the wall?”

“Uh-huh.” Joh

“Hmmm, yes,” McClanahan said, peering and prodding at the ice. “Yes, well, I think that’s all we’re going to find here.”

She got to her feet and clicked off the flashlight. Stygian gloom fell like a blow. Kate wasn’t especially claustrophobic and even liked the dark, but when she felt rather than saw McClanahan brush by she nearly levitated off the ground. She waited until they were up the slope of gravel and back out into the sunshine before she trusted her voice enough to ask, “What did we find there?”

McClanahan propped one foot on a chunk of ice, clasped her hands on her knee, and frowned down at them. “It’s the first week of May. From anecdotal reports we know that the glacier stopped thrusting forward in September of last year. My guess would be that the cave has not altered in any substantial way since last fall. The winter temperatures and the insulating layer of winter snowfall would have maintained the interior surface of the cave. Further.” Very much the learned lecturer condensing specialized information for consumption by an amateur audience, she held up one finger to forestall Kate’s comment. “Had the body been placed there this spring, the difference in temperature between the ice and the body would inevitably have left some mark.”

“An outline?” Joh

Kate, remembering the sound of melting water that had surrounded her in the cave, said, “It wouldn’t have melted?”

McClanahan considered this. “Given the difference in temperature between solid ice and human flesh, no matter how dead, and with the temperature outside the cave steadily rising, I believe I would have been able to detect some mark. If, on the other hand, the body had been placed there late last fall, with temperatures already falling steadily, perhaps also with the body already chilled itself, very little impression would have been left, easily erased during spring melt off.”

“So, bottom line,” Kate said. “Was the body placed there last fall or this spring?”

“One ca

“Why?”

“How long would it take given this spring’s ambient temperatures to melt that much snow, so that the cave would be revealed and someone could deposit a body inside it?”

Kate looked back at the open slash of the cave mouth at the foot of the wide, dirty wall of ice, and had an unwelcome vision of the body of Len Dreyer propped up against the back of the ice cave, sightless eyes staring toward the snow-filled entrance, waiting out the winter until spring and Joh

“It’s only a guess,” Millie said, “but I’d say yes.”

Plus, so far no one reported seeing Dreyer after October, Kate thought. Bobby might have been the last one to see him alive.

“What’s your paper going to be about, Millie?” Joh

“ ‘The Effect of Seismic Events and Meteorological Transformation on Glacial Geomorphology in Interior Alaska,”“ McClanahan replied promptly.

Joh

“You know about earthquake faults?”

“Sure. Everybody in Alaska knows about earthquake faults.”

“You know about the Alaska-Aleutian megathrust subduction zone?”

“Uh, where the two main faults butt up against each other?”

“Not bad,” McClanahan said. “There may be hope for you, Mr. Morgan. My paper examines what effect that zone may or may not have on the thrust and retreat of Alaskan glaciers. With a sidebar on the weather, including global warming.”