Season of Death (49 page)

Ray squinted out the window: metal hangars, utility vehicles, relocatable trailers, a wide, plain building on stilts with a sign that proclaimed
BARROW AIRPORT
. Ray had never considered it an attractive facility, but at the moment it seemed almost heavenly.

When Jack had reigned in the Beaver and they were rolling toward the terminal at a manageable rate of speed, three figures emerged and filed down the steps to the tarmac. The shortest had a shaved head: Lewis. The tallest was wearing a cowboy hat: Billy Bob. The third was shapely, with long, dark hair: Margaret.

“I called ahead,” Jack explained. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Ray shook his head. Why would he mind being met by a welcoming party consisting of his wife and two best friends? As Jack parked the Beaver, Ray realized that Billy Bob was on crutches, Lewis in a restrictive cast. Margaret was assisting them both.

Ray reached to unhook his seat belt and was rewarded with an outpouring of white-hot misery. Over the course of the flight, his entire body had stiffened and now seemed to rival the consistency of cement.

He waited, smiling out the window, until Margaret mounted a pontoon and opened the door. Leaping into the seat, she tried to kiss him but stopped when his face twisted.

“What’s the matter?” Backing up, she noticed his shirt. “Oh, Ray …”

“I didn’t mention your … ah … ‘long story’ scars,” Jack said as he flipped switches and secured the plane. “Didn’t want to worry anyone.”

Aghast, Margaret had retreated to the steel float and was peering at Ray with sad, hound-dog eyes. “What happened? Should I call an ambulance?”

He shook his head, doing his best not to wince.

“Should we take you to the hospital?”

Another shake. Although it wasn’t a bad idea.

“What do you want me to do?” Margaret was overflowing with concern, desperate to take some sort of action. “What can I do, Ray?”

“For starters, you can help me out of here.”

“Oh … Ray …” She frowned at him sympathetically and gently grasped an elbow. Thirty seconds and a fainting spell later, he was on the tarmac.

Lewis grinned at him. “Look like da Bush almost get ya.”

“Ya all right, Ray?” Billy Bob drawled.

“Compared to you,” Ray replied, “I’m in good shape.”

Margaret glared at them. “This is what happens when boys are allowed to play in the woods by themselves. I told you it was a bad idea.”

“Yeah …” Ray groaned. They started for the terminal. “And you were right.”

“It was a real barn-burnin’ dee-saster.” Billy Bob guffawed, bunny teeth gleaming. “But it shorely will make one heck of a story one a these days.”

“We all be lookin’ back and laughing,” Lewis agreed.

“I hope so,” Ray muttered.

They were making a slow assault of the stairs when Margaret said, “I’ll bet you never even broke open the book I gave you.”

“You mean the little Bible? Actually, it saw quite a bit of use.”

“Raymond … don’t lie.”

“No. Really. It wound up coming in very handy. We … uh … we used it to …” His voice trailed off. He wasn’t sure how to explain. “I’ll tell you later.”

When they finally reached the glass double-door entry, Ray raised a hand to peer inside. There were people everywhere—sitting, standing, sleeping against backpacks and suitcases along the walls. “What’s going on?”

“Da airport been closed. All day.”

“And most-a yesterday. It closed down right after we got in,” Billy Bob informed.

“Why?”

“Somethin’ ta do with the ra-dar.”

“We weren’t sure you would be cleared to land,” Margaret told him. A tear materialized, and she embraced him lightly. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me too.”

Patting her stomach she smiled.
“We’re
glad you’re back …
Daddy.”

“Aiyaaa! Almost forgot about da baby! We gotta have us a party.”

“Maybe later,” Ray grunted. Margaret pulled the door open for him and he shuffled inside like an eighty-year-old arthritis sufferer. Three dozen weary travelers turned to eye them, the annoyance at having been stranded in Barrow obvious.

In the center of the crowd, a few degrees to the left, a woman roused herself and began to stretch, arching her back. She happened to look up just as Ray’s gaze found her.

“Cindy.” Ray pointed. “There’s Cindy.”

“She stuck here like everybody else.” Lewis nodded.

“We should go over and say howdy,” Billy Bob suggested.

Ray was mesmerized, his head full of voices: Janice feigning innocence, Uncle’s rasping, “She no Nahani,”Keera agreeing, “She’s not.” Standing there in the terminal, he considered for the first time, the actual possibility that someone other than Janice might have killed Mark Farrell.

What was it Keera had told him? Nahani is a woman. A woman, but not Janice Farrell … Who else had a motive?

A piece of the puzzle clunked into place. Mark hadn’t been killed to keep him quiet about the Hunan scam. His silence in that matter had been insured by a brick of plastique. Before he could be blown to bits in his floatplane, however … someone else had …

Ray continued to study Cindy. She had seen and recognized him. Her eyes were avoiding him now, her cheeks flushing, her seat no longer comfortable.

“Let’s go say howdy,” Billy Bob insisted.

Why would a coed kill her professor? Especially if she was having an affair with him? Ray couldn’t think of a reason. Except … What if she wasn’t having an affair with him? What if he had turned her down? What if she had a crush on him, and he failed to return her love? Was that enough to send a college student into the Bush with a pickax?

Ray had no evidence and only a faint intuitive sense that these wild guesses might be on target. The problem was how to confirm or disprove the theory. If Cindy was guilty, she wasn’t going to blurt out a full confession. The truth would have to be dragged out in a series of long interrogation sessions. On the other hand, if she was innocent …

“Anybody got any handcuffs?” he asked.

All three of his companions looked at him as though he were demented.

“What we need cuffs for?” Lewis asked with a sneer.

“In case Cindy turns out to be our murderer.”

Now their eyes said they were certain he required a straightjacket.

“Ray … honey, you’re tired and beat-up …”

“Yah, Ray honey,” Lewis teased. “We go home, we have baby party.”

“Before I forget, we need to contact the FBI,” he told Billy Bob. “Have them drop in on Kanayut and the dig site. And Headcase has a couple of packages waiting for them. I promised him the Fibbies wouldn’t arrest him, if he’d bug out. I’d rather see him rot in prison, but he was pointing a pair of shotguns at me during our negotiation, so …”

A tongue played at the cowboy’s buckteeth. “I’m afraid ya lost me, partner. FBI?”

“Mark Farrell unraveled a plan to shut down the Red Wolf Mine. Apparently it was wreaking havoc with the world markets and with Hunan Enterprises’ zinc holdings. So Hunan set up a fake archaeological site in order to have Red Wolf declared a protected historical site. Mark found out.”

“So they killed him?” Margaret asked in a tone of disgust.

“No. They were going to. They rigged his plane with explosives. But before he could get to it, someone else killed him. For a totally unrelated reason.”

“Which was?” Margaret asked, spellbound.

“Jealousy.”

“But … Ms. Farrell said that Cindy was … you know … uh …” Billy Bob stuttered. “Playin’ around with her hubby. That’s why she was gettin’ sent home.”

“And she was telling the truth,” Ray said. “Sort of. My guess is that Cindy told Janice they were having an affair. And with Mark’s past history, Janice believed her.”

“But why?” Margaret asked.

“Because she was obsessed with him? And he wasn’t interested in her?” Ray postulated, watching Cindy from across the room.

Margaret thought this over. “If she really was obsessed with him … and he turned away her advances … Maybe if she couldn’t have him, she didn’t want anyone else to. And she told his wife that lie … just to cause Mrs. Farrell, her principal rival, added grief?”

“Makes sense to me,” Ray said, even though the logic seemed twisted. Sick. That was it. Cindy, if she had actually committed murder, was mentally ill. In a big way.“But it’s all conjecture. I don’t have anything tangible.”

The issue of her guilt cleared itself up as he started toward her. First her head jerked toward the door, searching for an escape route. Ray could see her mentally weighing the chances. But there was no place to run even if she made it. No place to hide. Not in Barrow. The expression on her face reflected an understanding of this, fear of being found out transitioning into a fear of being apprehended before changing to a hopeless, dependant look of resignation. Caught.

“Didn’t think I’d see you again,” she said with a pleasant smile.

Ray suddenly remembered that Cindy had made him promise to find Mark and helpfully pointed him toward Mark’s floatplane. “You knew about the bomb, didn’t you?”

“I knew Mark wasn’t supposed to make it to Juneau.”

This disclosure threw a wrench into Ray’s hypothesis. If Cindy knew that Mark’s life was in danger, why kill him?

“I did it,” she blurted. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Did what?”

“Killed Mark.”

Ray stared at her in amazement. So much for lengthy interrogations. His next question arose out of simple curiosity. “Why?”

“Why did I kill him?” Her nose wrinkled up as if this were self-evident. “Because it was my turn.”

“Your turn?”

“He’d been with all the other coeds in camp. And suddenly, when it was my turn, he goes on this fidelity kick. Staying true to his wife.” She rolled her eyes at this. “I told him that I loved him, that I’d loved him for two semesters. But he just laughed at me. Like I was a stupid kid. He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have laughed at me.”

Ray nodded. Mark Farrell had chosen the wrong time to try and piece together his broken marriage vcws. This girl was not someone you wanted mad at you. “Did you really think you could murder a man and get away with it?”

She gaze up at him with a half smile. “I almost did. If this airport wasn’t so prehistoric, I’d be long gone.” She stood, shoulders drooping, lower lip forming an exaggerated pout, ready to be incarcerated. “I loved Mark too much,’’ she lamented. “That was the problem. I loved him too much.”

FIFTY-FOUR

Ten weeks later

“T
HEY PICK A
spot fer the trial yet?”

“Fairbanks.”

Billy Bob nodded his approval. “Beats havin’ it up here. What with all the hoop-la and the mee-dia and all. Big trials nowadays are a regular circus. What I think is …”

“Uh-huh,” Ray grunted, not really listening. He was preoccupied with Margaret. She was still in line, waiting with all of the other pregnant women at the check-in desk.

“… Them high-falootin mouthpieces is the real problem.”

“Highfalutin
mouthpieces,” Ray repeated with a nod.

“Wall … that’s what they is. Them lawyers is evil …”

Ray took a sip of coffee and watched as a woman who looked ready to burst open and deliver right there in the waiting room waddled to a seat and the line crept orward.” … And another problem is all them …”

“Lazy cops. Dats da problem.”

Ray and Billy Bob looked up as Lewis slumped into a chair across from them.

“Dey be drinking coffee and eating …” He paused and lifted the top from a cardboard flat of assorted donuts. “When dey should be out catching da bad guys.”

Ray selected a chocolate old fashion. The cowboy snatched up a glazed jelly roll.

“I miss much a anything?” Lewis asked, already chewing a maple bar.

“Not yet,” Ray answered.

“Where you get da coffee?”

“Down that there hall,” Billy Bob said, pointing. “Got a machine spits out some decent joe. Wouldn’t you say, Ray?”

“It spits it out, all right,” he agreed. You had to stand back to avoid getting soaked.

When Lewis disappeared around the corner, Billy Bob asked, “But we got us a perty good case, don’t we?”

We? Ray found the cowboy’s use of the plural amusing. Where had he been while Ray was risking his life? “Yeah. It’s
perty
good,” he said, mercilessly mimicking his partner. “The DA has a signed confession from Cindy. He thinks she’ll get twenty years.”