A Grave Denied

At that moment a shard of ice roughly the size of a brontosaurus calved from the face of the glacier and smashed to the earth outside in a thousand pieces, one of which narrowly missed Andrea, which, after her own heart settled down, Vanessa thought was a darn shame. They all jumped and bumped into each other. Joh

The other three heard the sound of rapidly receding feet. The opening into the ice was still free. “Hello?” Joh

There was no response.

“Maybe they’re dead,” Vanessa said, articulating the thought uppermost in all their minds. “We should check.” She stepped inside the open mouth of the cave. After a momentary hesitation, Joh

As they approached the sitting figure, their eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was a man, dressed in worn jeans and a Carhartt’s jacket. His face was the blue-white of the face of the glacier, veined and mottled.

The hole in his chest was the size of a basketball.

2

You were idiots to go inside the mouth of the glacier in the first place,“ the trooper told them in a stern voice. ”That’s what I said,“ Andrea said. She was fully aware of Jim Chopin’s many and manifest charms, and she smiled up at him, using all of her own fledgling ones.

“But you did good when you didn’t touch anything, in getting Ms. Doogan to make sure no one else went inside, and in getting Mrs. Lindbeck to come for me.”

“It was Joh

Joh

Jim gri

They had to step to one side when Billy Mike and his son, Dandy, shuffled by with the body. A nervous titter that must have been equal parts amusement and horror was quickly suppressed. The body was frozen into a sitting position. Billy and Dandy had draped a tarp over the body but the shape itself looked lumpen and grotesque. It didn’t help that the tarp kept slipping, and that the face of the corpse kept peeping out at them, like a child playing hide-and-seek.

“Do you know who it is?” Joh

“It’s Mr. Dreyer,” Vanessa said.

Jim looked at her. “What?”

“It’s Mr. Dreyer, the handyman,” Vanessa said. She was pale but resolute. “He came last spring to rototill our garden.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded. “His face wasn’t… I could see his face. It’s Mr. Dreyer. He helped Uncle Virgil build our new greenhouse, too, so I really do recognize him, sir.”

Billy Mike slammed the door of his Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer, new the year before and now looking as if it had been driven through the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, and walked back up the trail in time to hear Vanessa’s words. “Yeah, it’s Len Dreyer all right,” he said.

“Len Dreyer,” Jim said, writing it down in his notebook. “Vanessa says he’s a handyman?”

“Oh yeah,” Billy said. He pulled out a bright blue banda

“So, mostly construction work?”

“No, I said everything and I meant everything. He worked the sluice a while back for Mac Devlin out at the Nabesna Mine. He did some guiding for Demetri, or at least some packing, and Demetri said he was a hell of a cook. He fished when somebody needed a deckhand for a period. He installed the new bleachers in the school gymnasium, and did the electrical for the Native Association’s building. He was all over the Park.”

“Was he married?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Kids?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Where did he live?”

Billy brightened, glad to have a question he could answer definitively. “Got a snug little cabin up the Step road, about two miles north of the village.”

“How long had he lived in the Park?”

Billy shrugged. “Twenty years? Thirty? Like I said, he’s been around a while.” He gave Jim instructions on how to get to Dreyer’s cabin. “So?”

“So, take the body into town and get it on the first plane to Anchorage. Tell George the state’s buying.”

Billy gri

Jim became aware of Ms. Doogan standing at his elbow. “Sergeant Chopin?”

“It’s Jim,” he told her.

“Jim,” she said, “I’d like to get my kids back to town.” She indicated the huddle of students halfway up the slope from the beach. They looked subdued. “You know the way the Bush telegraph works. The parents will start showing up any minute now.”

Ms. Doogan was right, and if the news had reached Bobby Clark, chances were it had probably already gone out over Park Air. The last thing Jim wanted was an exercise in crowd control, especially a crowd consisting of anxious parents, who were by definition never on their best behavior. He looked at Joh

Joh

The rest of the class sat huddled together. Jim closed his notebook and raised his voice. “Okay, kids, listen up. Most of you already know me, but for those of you who don’t, I’m Sergeant Jim Chopin of the Alaska state troopers. As you all know, the body of a man was found inside the mouth of the glacier. It looks like he’s been murdered.” He kept his voice matter-of-fact, and waited for the ripple of shock to settle. Andrea had broadcast the news in full voice, according to Joh

Jim waited long enough for the following silence to get a little uncomfortable. “Okay, then. Anybody who remembers anything later on, doesn’t matter how small or insignificant or downright silly it seems, doesn’t matter when, I want to hear about it. You’re all deputized for the duration, okay?”

“Lame,” somebody muttered.

Jim ignored it. The effective practice of law enforcement required an aptitude for selective hearing. “I’ll go over the ground, but twenty pairs of eyes are always going to be better than one. Chief Billy knows how to get in touch with me.” He stepped back and nodded at Ms. Doogan, and she shepherded her charges to the trail and into a fast clip down the hill.

Jim sat on a convenient boulder, facing into the sun, and went over his notes. Len-Leonard? -Dreyer was a white male in his mid to late fifties. He hadn’t had a wallet but that wasn’t unusual in the Park, where there weren’t any ATMs requiring cash cards and where barter was the major method of exchange of goods and services anyway. A driver’s license might be needed once you hit Ahtna and the Gle

There was a roll of bills totaling $783 and sixty-seven cents in loose change-bet Dreyer didn’t have a bank account, either- a moly bolt, three Sheetrock screws, one metal washer, half a roll of Wintergreen Lifesavers, and one of those miniature screwdrivers with interchangeable heads. There was a well-used Leatherman clipped to his belt.