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Prince wasted no time in pleasantries. “I just got a call via the marine operator. She relayed a call from an old guy up at”-he heard the rustle of paper in the background-“at Weary River. Is that right, Weary River?”
He carried the walk-around phone to the map on the wall. “Yeah,” he said, locating Weary River. About halfway between Rainbow and Russell. “I’ve got it.”
“Well, this old guy, he’s Italian or used to be before he homesteaded out at Weary River and turned American, and she couldn’t hardly understand him but she thinks he called to say that he’d found a body.” Prince’s excitement crackled down the line.
“Where?”
“A place called Rainbow.”
He moved his finger up. “Got it. Rainbow.” He was very conscious of Wy looking over his shoulder and the rest of them crowding around behind her. “Who’s dead?”
“A guy name of Peter Cole.”
“Peter Cole?” He felt Wy’s indrawn breath and looked at her. “Hold on.” To Wy he said, “You know him?”
She nodded, dazed. “He’s on my mail route.” She swallowed and met his eyes in sick apprehension. “The same day I went to Kagati Lake and found Opal Nunapitchuk.”
“You saw him that day?”
She shook her head. “I almost never do. He’s a hermit, doesn’t like being around people much. He left the bag to be picked up on the strip. I took it and left the incoming mailbag in its place.”
“Is that any way to treat the U.S. mail?” Jim said.
Wy shrugged. “It’s his way. He doesn’t hurt anybody.” She winced. “Or he didn’t.”
“Prince,” Liam said into the phone. “How did Peter Cole die?”
Her voice was triumphant. “The old Italian guy said he was shot.” She couldn’t have been happier if Ted Bundy were loose in the Bay.
“With what?”
A little deflated, Prince said, “He didn’t say, just that Cole was shot. He’s got a pretty thick accent,” she added. “It’s not easy to understand him over the radio.”
He was looking at the map, following the thick black line that marked Wy’s mail route, some of the destinations printed on the map, some penciled in later by Wy. Kagati Lake. Russell. Weary River, where the old Italian guy homesteaded. He tapped the map. “What’s his name, do you know?” he asked Wy.
“Julie Baldessario.”
“Julie?”
“Giuliano. But everyone calls him Julie.”
“He’s a reliable kind of guy?”
She nodded. “He’s about a million years old, came into the country after World War II. Lost his family in the Holocaust. Just looking for a little peace and quiet, I think.”
“Good story,” Jo said, interested.
Jim smacked her lightly on the arm, and she subsided.
“But he’s very much all there,” Wy said. “If he says he found Peter Cole shot, he found Peter Cole shot. The question is, what was Julie doing out in this?” She waved a hand at the storm outside.
Liam ignored her, continuing to trace the map with his forefinger. “Rainbow, Kemuk.” His finger had to make a little jog to one side. “Nenevok Creek.”
He stood up. “We’ve got dead people at Kagati Lake, Russell and Nenevok Creek. All were murdered. All were killed within five days of each other. Some nut is shooting his way from settlement to settlement.”
Wy was still staring at the map. Her face was white.
“Wy?” he said, touching her arm. “Wy, what is it?”
Mute, she pointed.
Her mail route took a dogleg between Rainbow and Kemuk and another between Warehouse Mountain, Kokwok and Akamanuk, but south of Akamanuk…
South of Akamanuk was Old Man Creek.
EIGHTEEN
Wood River Mountains, September 6
She was so cold.
She couldn’t feel her hands anymore. Her feet had been numb since the night before.
She knew a storm was coming the previous afternoon when the low, dark clouds took over the sky and the wind began to bite into her flesh, but she’d never been outside in a storm before and she had had no idea how cold it would be.
She’d found rudimentary shelter in a hollow against the side of the uprooted cottonwood. What little wit she had left had murmured that something else might regard that hollow as its own, but she was too tired and too hungry and too cold to care. She found a long branch and propped it against the trunk over the hollow. She found other branches and leaned them against the first. She scraped together a covering of pine needles and fallen leaves and more branches, and then she crawled beneath it and curled into a sodden ball, shoving her hands between her thighs. If he found her, he found her. She had to rest. And she could go no further in the dark. She had fallen the night before and hurt her leg. She could still walk, but for a few paralyzing moments she had thought that it was broken, that she would be unable to move, to run, to flee, to fight if need be.
If he had come on her then, he would have had her.
Somehow, she had managed to pull herself to her feet and stagger on. She knew he wasn’t far behind her. She could feel him coming, feel his rage, feel his hands on her, his penis thrusting into her, and she simply could not bear to endure that again. Better to die out here in the wilderness. Mark was dead-no, no, don’t think of Mark, bleeding his life away while she went like a lamb to his slaughterer-she might as well be, too. All she wanted now was to die in peace, and not to be buried next to all the other Elaines in that sun-dappled dell of death.
In some part of her mind, the part that was still able to wonder, to think, she was amazed that she had made it this far. She couldn’t believe that she had escaped in the first place. Squirting the Windex into his eyes had been pure instinct; she hadn’t even known she had still been carrying it.
She wondered what was in it, in Windex. Alcohol, maybe, that was why it evaporated so fast. And why it stung the eyes so much. Who made it? Johnson and Johnson? Procter and Gamble? She would write their president a letter of appreciation, whoever they were and whomever he was. She would give a testimonial. She would clean her windows with Windex for the rest of her life. She’d order it by the case, by the pallet, by the truckload-
Her stomach growled. Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up. I know you’re hungry. So am I. We don’t have any food, so just shut up.
She’d found some highbush cranberries that morning and gobbled them down, equally oblivious to the piles of bear scat with cranberry seeds in them and the seeds themselves, which took up most of the fruit. They were so tart as to be nearly sour, but they gave her a spurt of energy that finally got her out of the valley.
She was on the downside of a set of rolling foothills now. Before her spread an immense flat marsh with a wide river snaking across it. She knew the sun came up in the east, and she also knew that this was Alaska, that it was September and the sunrise was moving steadily south. Bristol Bay lay to the southeast. Newenham was in the southeast. They had changed planes in Newenham. There were houses in Newenham, warm houses, and stores, stores with food on the shelves, and ru
From something Mark had said once-no, no, don’t think of Mark, facedown in the icy water-she knew enough to follow the rill downstream to a creek, the creek downstream to a river, the river downstream to the sea and civilization. And she knew that he knew it, too, and would be hard on her heels.
Her stomach growled again. Shut up shut up shut up. She found a stand of fireweed, and she remembered from the herb book that Natives ate the pith. She’d paused precious moments in her flight to strip the leaves and crack the stems, only to find the marrow woody. She ate it anyway, and dug up the roots because the book had said those were edible, too. The taste of the dirt was cool and metallic. Later she stumbled into a patch of wild celery, something her friend at work had called pushki, and she picked some and peeled it and ate it. It, too, was wooden and tasteless. Blisters were already forming where one of the leaves had brushed her arm. Because she was trying not to follow the creeks downhill too closely, she had no water to wash until it was too late.