The Mountains Bow Down (5 page)

Taking in the horrified expression on my mother's face, I stepped aside and allowed the portly mortician to clatter past us with the dead body. He grumbled as he passed, and I geared up for my first whopper of this vacation.

“I have no idea what that's about.” Quickly I changed the subject. “Aren't you supposed to be sightseeing today?”

But her jasper-hued eyes remained on the mortician. He pushed the rattling conveyance across the conglomerate pavement that formed the ship's dock. The rough pebbly surface made his progress sound like a train of broken-down shopping carts. At a black Suburban that was coated with winter dirt, he snapped open the back barn doors as if the handles were hot. Taking hold of the cart again, he rammed it against the vehicle's dented chrome bumper. Its legs buckled, sending the entire contraption flying into a dark space gutted for transporting passengers who would never complain.

“And on a vacation too,” my mother said sadly.

The mortician slammed the doors and whisked his pudgy palms across one another, finishing off the job.

“Wasn't there a trip to Misty Fjords today?” I asked.

Her skin was like Carrara marble, and when she closed her eyes, bowing her head, she looked like an angel. In her sweet Southern voice she began praying, calling out to heaven with heartfelt pleas. Though I closed my eyes with her, I couldn't help listening to the Suburban's rumbling muffler, or how it harmonized with the tour bus convoy pulling away from the dock. I opened one eye and saw that a single bus remained. Closing my eyes again, I tried to concentrate on the words seeded by Scripture, watered with Dixie, and rising to their intended destination in a voice that trembled.

But another voice intruded.

“Hey, what're you guys doing?”

Claire, the self-professed clairvoyant, walked toward us wearing a bright-yellow raincoat, despite persistent sunshine. Her spiked hair was ashen, like asbestos, and although she claimed to see into the future, my experience had been that she barely stumbled through the present.

Claire hooked a thumb at my mother, then whispered, “What's she doing?”

“Nothing you'd be interested in.” I glanced at the Suburban. The mortician glowered, waiting. I suddenly wondered what Claire and my aunt would say when they discovered Judy Carpenter was dead.

“Is she okay?” Claire whispered, narrowing her already beady eyes.

“She's fine.”

“Okay, then tell her to wrap it up. The bus is waiting.”

This was my sister's fault. My sister Helen was supposed to come on the cruise. But at the last minute she claimed work would keep her in Richmond. My aunt gave the ticket to Claire, and I added another entry to my long list of Helen's infractions.

“Amen,” my mother said.

She looked calmer, marginally, and I guided her gently toward the last remaining tour bus, now belching diesel fumes at the curb.

“Take plenty of pictures,” I told her. “I hear those fjords are beautiful.”

“Why aren't you coming?” she asked.

“Hiking, remember?” Except now it was a lie. Another lie. “I told you. Deer Mountain Trail.”

“DeMott said to make sure—”

“Yes, I know, don't worry. I'm going with a group.”

Lie number two. Or three.

Suddenly the mortician honked his horn. My mother jumped. I looked over. He was staring out his window with an expression that said his best friend was the grim reaper.

“Why is that man staring at us?” my mother asked.

Because I asked him for a ride to the funeral home
.

“He must be waiting for somebody.” Three lies, in less than a minute. A new record.

Claire trundled beside us. “Did that guy just roll a body bag down the gangplank?”

“Gangway,” I said.

“But I saw him. He shoved a body into that car, right? Last night I had a dream somebody died. I woke up this morning, knowing it would come true.”

“What?!” my mother cried.

“Nadine, I can see into the future. Especially when it comes to death.”

“Don't you need to get somewhere?” I gave Claire a frigid smile.

“What d'ya think I came over for? Charlotte's saving seats on the bus but some guy just whacked her with his cane. Your mother's holding up our whole tour.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry.” My mother hurried, following Claire through the gray clouds of exhaust. Like people passing through a veil, all I could see was the yellow raincoat and my mom's new pink tennis shoes. She was accustomed to high heels that pitched her forward like a ski jumper, and the tennis shoes gave her a flat-footed walk. When she climbed aboard the bus, she glanced back.

My smile was ready, waiting. I waved.

Once they were inside, I glanced back at the mortician, giving him a signal that it would just take one moment more.

But the bus didn't leave.

Walking up and down the middle aisle, a tour guide handed out papers. As the moments stretched on, I unclipped my cell phone and tapped out the cell number Geert gave me, in case I had any more “stupid questions.”

Here was one: “What's the mortician's cell number?” I asked.

“He is with you,” Geert said.

“I need to call him.”

An incriminating silence followed and I walked to the edge of the pier. The harbor smelled of kelp, and calciferous barnacles clung to the wooden pylons. Water lapped against the pier, and I memorized the ten digits Geert offered, beginning with area code 907.

I dialed the number. The Suburban's window slid down and the mortician's round face peered out.

“You can't just walk over here?” he said into the phone.

The bus still hadn't moved. And any moment some idea could pitch its tent inside my mother's paranoid mind, prompting more terrified questions.

“I'll meet you at the funeral home,” I said. “Is it far?”

I heard a low guttural sound in the phone.

“You're in Ketchikan,” the mortician said. “Nothing's far.”

Downtown Ketchikan looked as if organized landslides laid out the streets. On the mountain's upper levels, wood-frame houses notched the mountainside while a commercial district descended in waves along winding and narrow streets that eventually dropped to a final row of storefronts hanging over the ocean on piers.

Hurrying down Front Street, I followed the mortician's directions. On my right, Deer Mountain loomed three thousand feet above town. I still had my rock hammer in my backpack, hoping to sample some local geology, and the mountain's patient beauty seemed to mock my sudden change in plans. At Mission Street, I looked for St. John's Episcopal, remembering it because it had the same name as my parents' church back in Richmond. The resemblance stopped there. Even with the bright June sun shining on the lap siding, the building looked soggy. The graying boards testified to America's heaviest annual rainfall, precipitation that was measured in feet, not inches, per year. Ten to twelve feet, on average. The other difference? A totem pole across the street.

From Mission, I crossed a footbridge that became Creek Street. Water from the mountain rushed under the creosote-soaked boardwalk, pummeling the dark granite boulders and sending up a spray of mist that the morning sun turned into faint rainbows. Trotting across the boards, my steps sounded hollow. I passed a pretty Native girl standing in the doorway of a nineteenth-century wooden building. Her sequined dress didn't quite reach her dimpled knees and the sound of rushing water drowned out her greeting. Back in the early 1900s, this boulevard was Ketchikan's infamous Red Light District. The “houses of ill repute” had maintained a steady stream of miners and lumberjacks and merchants who got rich selling picks and shovels to fortune seekers. And now, in the era of Internet porn and MTV, a historic whorehouse seemed quaint.

The mortuary sat at the end of the boardwalk. An old woodframe building painted a muddy-yellow agate was tucked so tightly against the mountainside that the upper floor had doors to different roads, matching up with the switchbacks carved into the mountainside. Under the second story eaves, the Suburban's dented bumper was backed up to wide doors.

A bell rang when I opened the door on the first floor. I smelled the unmistakable odor—Eau de Funeral Home. They all smelled like this, like rose petals marinating in formaldehyde. But the receptionist was something different. Green tie-dye shirt. Long white hair cascading over bony shoulders.

She lowered the paperback she was reading—a murder mystery.

I introduced myself.

She smiled wickedly. “He's dying to see you.”

Before I could reply—if I could reply—she leaned back and threw her voice at the ceiling. “Bobby! She's here about the body!”

His reply was two stomps. The pendant light shimmered with dust.

“Go right up.” She picked up her book.

The stairs were narrow, beveled from wear, and I could see why the body was unloaded upstairs. The mortician waited at the second-floor landing, tying a rubber apron around his substantial girth. It was green. A plastic face shield was lifted to his sweating forehead. I changed my mind. Not a lamb. A crocodile.

“What'd I tell you?” he said. “Nothing's far in this stinkin' town.”

He lumbered down a paneled hallway, passing a room to our left that displayed caskets. Stacked three high along the wall, one was propped open in the room's middle to display the benefits of eternal satin rest. The mortician shoved open a set of hinged double doors on our right, letting the flaps swing back on me.

On a stainless steel table, the black body bag lay with thick nylon straps running under its lumpy contours. The straps were connected to a metal pulley system secured to an exposed I-beam on the ceiling. This, I presumed, was how he worked alone. Rolling carts, straps, pulleys. Even after rigor mortis set in, he could move a body by himself. Above a stainless steel sink hung a small certificate, a state license to embalm, while another document beside it gave him permission to perform autopsies. The stainless steel counter, four feet at best, displayed his tools. Clamps. Hooks. Scalpels. Nothing fancy. Once somebody died, finesse was wasted effort. Not that this particular mortician was concerned with finesse, ever.

“If you're planning to stay for the show,” he said, “I gotta get permission from the family. State law.”

“No, thank you, I don't need to observe the autopsy,” I said. For one, my presence would trigger suspicion in Milo Carpenter and I wanted the actor completely unprepared for any upcoming interviews. “I'm interested primarily in cause of death. You heard how she was found?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Finally something different.”

“Pardon?”

“The cruise ships send me newlyweds and nearly-deads. I get honeymooners who got drunk and fell overboard, or old folks who screwed up their medications for the last time. Sometimes a heart attack, since everybody wants to see Alaska before they kick the bucket. You might've noticed?”

“Noticed what?”

“Most of these passengers are one foot in the grave.”

I had noticed a certain demographic. At thirty, I was among our ship's youngest passengers.

“Do you have much experience with suicides?” I asked.

“Four this year.”

“In Ketchikan?”

He walked over to the sink, checking out the scalpels. “Teenagers. Boys. They watch that YouTube video.”

“What video?”

“The one that shows how to wrap a cord around the neck for a sexual thrill. Autoerotic asphyxiation. Cuts off the oxygen while they're masturbating.” He picked up a knife. “Problem is, the point of no return doesn't take long, a minute or two and they pass out with the cord still around their neck. Last month I flew into a Native village. Place doesn't even have one paved road. But they get the Internet. They have computers. One kid, one belt, and YouTube. And he was dead.”

“That's awful.”

He shrugged and examined the scalpel's triangular blade, like a hostess checking the cutlery for water spots.

“Have you ever seen a jumper's body?” I asked.

“We don't get much jumping in Ketchikan. With all the rain, we're more head-in-the-gas-oven type people.”

His smile was ghoulish and I suddenly wondered if I should stay for the autopsy. “Her body was hanging about twenty feet below the deck. There's no ladder down there.”

“I got it, she jumped.”

“Look carefully at her neck.”

His dark eyes shifted to the body bag.

“The rope was thin nylon,” I continued. “A jump from that height should've done major damage to the neck and throat. At the very least, the rope would've sliced into her windpipe.”

“I hear she's famous.”

“The husband's famous. Milo Carpenter, the actor.”

He nodded, picking up his rubber gloves. “Sure you don't want to stay?”

I thought of Milo's face from this morning, when we stood near the body. He showed fear. But fear of what, discovery? If he knew I suspected something, he'd probably lawyer-up. After that we'd learn nothing. “No, thank you. How long will your exam take?”