Bonereapers (21 page)
Authors: Jeanne Matthews
“Hold on, Tipton. I’m sure somebody’s looking for us as we speak. Why no hacking?”
“Hmm?”
“You said you didn’t hack Val’s computer.”
“Didn’t have to. She used the same password she’d used when she worked for Whitney.”
“And you found incriminating documents.”
“Hmm.”
“What did they prove, these documents?”
He made a raspy, incoherent sound.
“Tip? The Tillcorp documents, what did they show?”
“Cows and pigs and chickens…”
“What about them?”
“Sick. Tested positive.”
“Positive for what? Was it something the cows were eating that made them sick?”
“GM corn. Some new pathogen. Moving up the food chain. Mov…ing…up.”
“Tipton?” She’d read that people have been known to survive a drop in body temperature to sixty degrees. He couldn’t have dropped thirty-eight degrees this fast. “Tipton! Tipton, listen to me. There’s a chemical warmer down there on the ground somewhere. I’ll shine the light. Look for it and put it in your shirt. It’ll warm you up.” She took the light out of her pocket and shined it around the floor. “I think I see it, Tipton. It’s about two feet from your left leg. Can you…?”
“Said the only way to authenticate the documents was to name the source. Stupid. Had to kill him. Had to…”
“After Eftevang’s murder, did Warren tell you to frame Senator Sheridan?”
“My idea. Way better than a little dirt about sick cows.” He coughed. “No way to spin a murder.”
Dinah’s insides felt shivery. The cold was eating into her bones and her backside felt like a frozen tenderloin. She hugged herself and contracted her glutes. “So you took the e-mail you’d written and you planted it in the room Maks Jorgen had rented. How’d you get the key?”
“Lying on the front desk. Easy-peasy.”
He was playing with the flashlight beam, chasing it with his hands like a baby. She turned it off. “Where are the documents now, Tipton? What did you do with them?”
“Secret.”
“Tell me. I haven’t got anyone to tell.”
But he seemed to be drifting into delirium. She repositioned herself, flexed her neck, and shone the light around the walls again. If she could stand up, her head would be almost even with the opening. And if she could reach up with her arms and gain some purchase, she just might be able to heave herself over the top. It would hurt like hell, but if she made it, she’d be free.
She took one hand out of the mitten, put the light in her mouth, and braced both hands firmly on the wall behind her. Slowly, she lifted her left foot onto the pipe until the heel was almost against the wall. Using her leg strength and scooching her back against the wall, she pushed herself up by inches. As she became more upright, she drew her right leg up and planted her right foot on the pipe. All she had to do now was turn around and hoist herself over the top. She took a deep breath, cautioned herself not to look down, and prepared to about-face.
Her right foot slipped. She threw out her arms, caught nothing but air, and landed hard on her left hip. She felt the pipe give under her weight and pieces of dirt and debris that encrusted it broke off and hailed into the well. She didn’t swallow the flashlight, but she may have chipped a tooth.
“She had a cow,” maundered Tipton, jogged awake by the shower of dirt and stones.
Dinah clung to what was left of the pipe and waited for her heart to clear out of her throat. Keep calm, she reminded herself. Someone will come. She took the light out of her mouth. “Who had a cow, Tipton?”
“Valerie found out I was working for Zeb Warren.”
“You were Warren’s mole inside Sheridan’s campaign?”
“No more bein’ a flunky. Gonna be a top policy advisor in Zeb’s administration.”
The darkest hour is just before dawn, thought Dinah, only dawn wouldn’t come again until mid-February. The cold and the dark began to meld. They were inseparable from each other and from her. No one was coming. A feeling of finality settled over her. This was it. If he was going to die or if she was, she wanted to understand at least one thing. “Why did you shoot me, Tipton?”
“Hmm?”
“When I was coming out of the church, why did you shoot me?”
“Didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. Don’t you remember? I was wearing Erika’s parka.”
“Didn’t shoot Dinah. Didn’t…”
“Tipton? Tip, wake up. If you didn’t shoot me, who did?”
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind,
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
In a hole that you can’t find?
Dinah had been singing and talking to herself for a long time. Tipton had gone quiet. Nothing she said elicited a response, not that there was much to say at this point. The two of them were about to commit yet another crime in Longyearbyen. They were going to die.
The headlights from the car hadn’t attracted any rescuers and, the longer she waited, the less hope she held out. She had scrunched both her hands into her one remaining mitten and periodically, as her writing hand warmed, she had recorded Tipton’s confession in her notepad. It hardly mattered. Not even the cold mattered anymore. All she wanted was a comfortable place to lie down and rest. She felt like an endurance flagpole-sitter, only her endurance had run out.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind,
She waved her little flashlight around the dark walls in time with the music.
The girl you kissed fell in a hole,
She’s in an awful bind.
Something white swept across the wall in front of her and a shower of snow sprinkled her face. She raised the light into the yellowish face and close-set eyes of a polar bear. It dipped its foot-wide paw into the hole and swiped at her like a cat fishing in a fishbowl.
Wailing Jerusalem! She shrank against the wall. Her eyes dilated on the thick, curved claws. One swipe and she’d be burger. Her nostrils filled with the stench of him but, pretty obviously, she smelled like a yummy snack to him. The bear made a fierce chuffing sound and stretched its long neck and fat paw farther into the hole.
She would jump. If she had to die, all right. She would die. She would break her bones and freeze to death at the bottom of this pit. But she would not, she
would not
be devoured by a polar bear. Her heart crashed against her chest like a caged thing. Hand shaking, she shone her light into the abyss. Tipton was awake and stirring. He was muttering to himself and taking off his clothes. His parka and sweater had been tossed aside and he was pulling a turtleneck over his head.
“Tipton, are you crazy?”
The bear gnashed its teeth and made a broad swipe with its paw. She leaned as far away as she could without tumbling off her perch and shone her light in the bear’s eyes. They seemed to regard her with a mixture of irritation and interest. Not wanting to appear to challenge him, she turned off the light and averted her eyes.
“Please…” her voice fluted. She cleared her throat. “Please go away.”
“Burning up,” cried Tipton, naked from the waist up and tearing at his pants. It was as if he were preparing his flesh for the polar bear’s pleasure.
What was the matter with him? Carbon monoxide poisoning? Maybe a fire was smoldering in a coal seam down there. Maybe the introduction of oxygen into the pit had ignited a fire.
The bear snarled and bared his fangs. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. She donated every year to the World Wildlife Fund. Didn’t they keep a list? Didn’t she deserve some kind of an exemption? This was her private Ragnarok, an end so outlandish it must have been orchestrated by the gods. She’d always prided herself on having a kind of last-ditch courage, the spiritual legacy of her Seminole ancestors who never gave up and never showed the white feather. But it was one thing to be brave in the Florida sunshine with an edged weapon in your hands and a different thing altogether to be brave in a freezing hole, empty-handed, with a polar bear breathing down your neck.
She remembered the peanut butter cheese crackers she’d been carrying around with her since Honolulu. She reached into her purse, found the package, opened it, and began to throw the crackers up, one at a time. The first two fell down into the well, but the next one made it over the top. The bear retracted his paw. She managed to get another one out of the hole and allowed herself a grain of hope. Maybe he would be satisfied and go away. But in a minute, he came back and began to bounce up and down with his front paws, dislodging chunks of dirt and ice onto her head. She raised her arms to protect herself from the bombardment.
The bear continued to bounce and dig and snort. It must weigh over a ton. What if it fell in on top of them? She prayed it would miss her and land on Tipton.
A barrage of small rocks and ice rained down on her and jumping began to seem like the only alternative to becoming polar-bear chow. She calculated the distance to the bottom. If she suspended herself by her arms from the pipe, it would be only about a five foot drop. In his weakened state, Tipton posed no threat and if the carbon monoxide and the cold didn’t kill her, there was still a chance someone would see the car lights and come to dig her out.
She sat forward and shone the light below her into the pit. Best to swing forward on the landing so as to avoid Tipton’s broken leg. What was that word the kamikaze surfers yelled when they shot the curl? Cowabunga. She slid forward to the end of the pipe.
And then she heard the rumble of an engine. Had the car revved on its own? No. It was a different car. People had come. And barking dogs.
Karelian bear dogs?
The bear snorted and reared up on his hind legs. He towered over the hole. From her vantage point, all she could see was the lower part of his legs. The barking intensified, louder and more frenzied. The bear roared and bounced. Somebody shouted. Shots rang out. A flurry of ice balls hailed down on head.
When the noise stopped, she looked up into the bright, intelligent eyes of Crockett and Tubbs.
Thor’s face appeared between the faces of the dogs. “Dinah? Are you hurt?”
“I’m too cold to know.”
“I’ll have you out in a minute. Hang on.” He turned away.
“Thor?”
He looked back.
“Happy New Year.”
Dinah wasn’t really sick enough for the Sykehus, but she had plenty of scrapes and bruises and Nurse Vanya had softened since her last visit. She had recommended that Dinah stay overnight for observation and Dinah didn’t mind the idea of someone clucking over her through the night. Her brush with death had left her feeling nervous and needy and afraid to be alone. She suspected that Vanya was lonely, too. There were no other patients in the hospital and no other staff and it was New Year’s Day. They could keep each other company.
Vanya removed the thermometer from Dinah’s mouth and Dinah asked, “Why would a person take off his clothes in sub-zero weather?”
“It’s called paradoxical undressing. It’s not uncommon in cases of severe hypothermia. I’ve seen it lots of times.”
“What causes it?”
“Doctors say when the peripheral blood vessels become exhausted, they cause a rush of blood and heat to the extremities. A person who’s hypothermic gets confused and fooled into thinking he’s overheated. Hypothermia comes on faster if there’s some other trauma.”
Dinah nodded. In Tipton’s case, there had been big trauma. By the time Thor hauled him naked out of that hole, he looked like a goner. Thor wrapped him in blankets, splinted his leg, and within an hour, he had been airlifted to the hospital in Tromsø. Thor had promised to phone her as soon as he heard any news. She had told him about her discovery of Valerie’s fingernail in the weave of Tipton’s sweater and she’d recapped his confession. Her testimony probably wouldn’t stand up in a court of law. The semi-delirious confession of a man who thought he was having a heat stroke inside of a freezing-cold mine shaft would be dubious in the extreme.
And the revelation that he hadn’t shot her preyed on her mind. It threw everything into question.
“You were lucky,” said Vanya. “That
tosk
stole Tobejas’ car. When Tobejas walked back to the Whale after seeing you to the hotel, it was gone. Right away he thought it had something to do with the young man who frightened you. He called his wife to come and get him in the snøscooter and they went straightaway to Thor’s cabin to tell him.”
“It’s very odd for a policeman not to have a telephone.” Dinah didn’t want to criticize the man. He
had
saved her life. But he’d been missing in action at the climax. If he’d been on duty at the hotel, she wouldn’t have been addled and dragged off into a pit. He should be here right now. She’d told him that Tipton wasn’t the one who shot her.
“Thor has a telephone.”
“Tobejas didn’t think so. He had to drive to his cabin.”
“
Ja
, but it’s the holiday. Thor wouldn’t turn on his phone for work. He and the other policemen and women have their vacations, too. Three weeks in July and two weeks at Christmas and New Year. It’s the law. I am the, what do you say? The skeleton.”
Dinah smiled. “The skeleton crew.”
“
Ja
. People who live here want to go south and visit their families. Only the crazy tourists and American
politikers
want to come here at this time of year.”
A buzzer went off.
“Maybe another patient has come. Drink your tea and I’ll be back when I can.”
“Vanya, wait.” Dinah was seized by a feeling of dread. “Is there a rifle somewhere in the hospital?”
“
Nei
. That would be silly.” She hied off down the hall, chuckling at the silliness.
Dinah bounded out of bed, draped a blanket around her, and went to the door of her room. She didn’t know whom to be afraid of or how to protect herself other than to hide. The main entrance and registration desk was to her right. She turned left and was ten yards down the hall, looking for an unlocked door when she heard Erika’s voice behind her.
“Dinah. Where are you going?”
She turned. “Nowhere, really. Happy New Year, Erika.”
“
Godt Nytt År
!”
Dinah walked back to meet her.
She carried a large white teddy bear with a red ribbon around its neck. She pushed the bear into Dinah’s arms. “A keepsake. So that you won’t forget our time together in Norge.”
Dinah eked out a smile. Erika hadn’t heard about her encounter with the polar bear. She couldn’t know how deeply unlikely it was that she would ever forget her time in Norge.
“Here now, get back to bed.” Vanya shooed them back into Dinah’s room. “And after I’d gotten you properly warmed up.”
Dinah climbed back into bed with the bear. Erika sat in the visitor’s chair. Vanya trundled off and left them alone.
Erika looked down at her lap and rubbed her thighs. “The governor phoned Whitney and told him the murderer has been apprehended. I guess I was wrong about Mahler. He had nothing to do with either murder. But Tipton? I can hardly believe it.”
“Just like in the books,” said Dinah. “The least likely.”
“I thought I would be your ‘least likely.’” She pushed her hair out of her face and smiled. “Whitney gave us an abbreviated account. He said there’d been a fall and you’d been hurt.”
“A few scratches.” Dinah almost laughed at her imitation of Nordic stoicism. “I’ll be discharged tomorrow morning.”
“Then I’ll tell you good-bye now. The governor has given us permission to leave and Jake has ordered the plane to be ready at six. We’ll be back in Washington tomorrow morning. Senator Fry is staying over for a day or two. He says the two of you will take a commercial flight.”
Dinah toyed with the bear’s ribbon. “Have you told Maks good-bye?”
“Yes.”
“Is he being philosophical about it?”
“Maks is fine. He has written a new song. It’s very good. I think it will be a big hit. He plans to cut another album with his wife.”
“He’s married? I thought he was incurably in love with you.”
“I’m his romantic invention, the Fata Morgana glimpsed once and gone forever. Maks has a very nice wife.”
Dinah digested this news without remark. She didn’t understand marriage and it was beginning to feel as if she never would.
Erika said, “Colt has decided to drop out of the presidential race. He’ll serve out his term in the Senate. In the meantime, he’s going to use whatever influence he has to find Hannalore. Perhaps Inge will take pity on us.”
“I wish you good luck, Erika. And when I get home, I’m going to buy the entire list of Fata Morgana CDs.”
“I’ll send you a boxed set. But you must promise never to play them when you’re alone and drinking wine.” Her hair fell across her face and she got up to leave. “Well,
adjø
, Dinah.” She paused and turned back at the door. “There’s a Norwegian superstition that if someone who likes you puts a curse on you, the trolls and evil spirits will see that you’ve already been cursed and they won’t bother with you.” She made a funny sound with her lips as if she were spitting. “
Tva tva
. And so now you have been cursed.” She laughed—it was the first time Dinah had observed the phenomenon. It transformed her for a moment, and then she was gone.
Dinah tossed the bear into the chair Erika had vacated and closed her eyes. She was thinking about the missing Tillcorp documents and what Tipton had done with them when Vanya brought her a supper tray at 7:30.
“I didn’t want to wake you, but Thor called. He asked if I would permit you to have a glass of wine. I said only if he brings enough for me. He will be here soon so eat your food. I won’t put up with a patient who doesn’t eat and then gets tipsy.” She set the tray on the bed and stood back. “There is roast turkey and
tyttebær
sauce left over from New Year’s Eve dinner.”
“It looks wonderful, Vanya.
Tusen takk
.” Dinah dug her fork into a strong-smelling, gelatinous substance on the side of her plate. “And what’s this?”
“
Lutefisk
,” said Vanya. “Lye fish. I made it myself. It is special. For the holidays.” She had such a proud, expectant face that Dinah couldn’t turn up her nose, although it was an effort to push a lump of the stuff into her mouth. “Wow.”
“
Ja
. It’s
godt
.”
The phone in Vanya’s apron pocket rang. She answered, listened, and held it out to Dinah. Someone is calling you from Hawaii.” She handed the phone to Dinah and left the room.
Dinah spat the
lutefisk
into her napkin. “Hello.”
“Norris Frye called and said you were in the hospital. Are you all right?” It was Eleanor.
“I’m fine, Eleanor.” Again the Nordic stoicism, but what was the point in describing all of her travails to Eleanor? There was nothing she could do, even if she were present. “I’m afraid I have bad news about your hapai banana, Eleanor. Now that it’s been saved for posterity here in Svalbard, the Seed Savers in Hawaii are bound by an international treaty to lend it out to anyone who asks.”
“Don’t worry about that. You didn’t I think I would send a real hapai to that ice cave until I knew the whole story, did you?”
Dinah laughed. “I should have known.” She tried to sound casual and offhand. “How is Jon?”
“Don’t worry about him either. He met a gorgeous Hawaiian girl over on Maui the day after Christmas and took her out last night. Today his head’s in the clouds. Looks like we’re gonna have a real Happy New Year.”
Dinah felt a small shock of disappointment. She was glad that he wasn’t pining away for her, but it was humbling to be so quickly relegated to Last Year’s Number. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one with fickle genes. “Aloha, Eleanor. I’m going to stay over in Norway for a few days. I’ll come and see you as soon as I get back.”
She had no sooner hung up than Thor walked in. His expression was somber.
“Did Tipton die?”
“No. He may lose his leg, definitely some toes, but he’s stable and out of intensive care.”
“Remind me,” she said, “never to jump to conclusions based on your face.”
The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “I brought wine and good news to go with it.” He set a paper sack on the chair with the bear and brought out a bottle of Tuscan wine and three glasses. “Vanya will come for her share in a while. She’s treating one of the British tourists for frostbite.
Dessverre
, large quantities of gin and Svalbard’s weather don’t mix.” He poured two glasses of wine and handed one to her. “
Sk
äl.”
“
Skäl
,” she said and took a sip. It was a Brunello and very tasty. “Is there more good news?”
He gave the teddy bear a quizzical look and set it on the floor. “I have arrested the man who shot you?”
“Who? How did you find him?”
“Brander Aagaard has confessed.”
“Aagaard! But why?”
“He claims he didn’t intend to hit anyone. He’s nearsighted. He thought he was aiming above Erika Sheridan’s head, trying to frighten her away from the church. He thought she had gone there to collect something meant for him.”
Dinah’s thoughts sprinted through the chronology of events. Aagaard must have seen Erika in the street the night Eftevang was murdered and marked the color of her parka. When Dinah met him in the Kaffe & Kantine, he was lying when he pretended not to know whether it was Valerie or Erika who’d been out of the hotel the night before. He’d probably recognized Maks Jorgen, as well. Dinah had been wearing Erika’s parka that day, but the café was dusky and smoky and she’d taken the coat off too far away for him to see it clearly. “The something he went to collect, would that be the package of documents Tipton had promised Eftevang? The evidence of Tillcorp’s skullduggery in Africa?”
Thor’s eyes glinted with satisfaction. He appeared particularly pleased with himself. “The documents are on a CD I found in his hotel room. I’m having it checked for fingerprints. Aagaard will testify that Teilhard left the CD for him in the church and told him where to find it. He will testify that Teilhard told him these were the documents he had copied from Valerie Ives’ computer and promised to Eftevang. After the holidays, when the medical examiner in Trømso has returned to work, we will discover other evidence against Teilhard.”
“And you’ll keep your job?”
He sat down and savored his wine. “If I want it.”
She ate a bite of her roast turkey, not sure whether to follow up on that or not. She mulled Aagaard’s explanation. Something jarred. “He’s lying, Thor. I was walking out of the church. If he thought Tipton’s drop had gone haywire and Mahler or Sheridan had found out about it and sent Erika to get back the CD, he would have assumed she’d already found it and had it in her pocket. He would have been aiming to bring her down, if not actually kill her.”
“If that’s so, you’re very lucky.”
The repetition of that phrase sounded like a temptation to any listening trolls and evil spirits. Dinah reached out and knocked her fingers against the back of the wooden chair.
Thor said, “From the little part of the CD I have reviewed, there will be an investigation of the agriculture minister’s connection to Tillcorp and his role in promoting their interests. The government will, what do you say? Clean house.”
Dinah was too cynical to believe that Tillcorp would suffer any negative consequences in the U.S., regardless of how outrageous their actions had been. The scandal would be reported and then it would blow over and Tillcorp’s public relations team would set to work to gloss over the whole ugly mess in Africa. They would tout their incredible scientific advances—fruits that could vaccinate and fish the size of a school bus, and they would prosper. She tried to remember the Bible verse, something about the wicked in great power thriving like the green bay tree. Jake Mahler may have lost one prospective president, but he had bought himself another. He probably owned the movers and shakers of both parties. Americans may as well get used to the taste of genetically modified foods. The country’s amber waves of grain would all be patented Tillcorp products by the end of the decade unless there was some kind of a food revolution.
Thor said, “If you like, I’ll take you out to my cabin tomorrow and introduce you to Crockett and Tubbs.”
“I’d like that. Do you suppose there’s a chance of seeing the northern lights in the next few days?”
