The Mountains Bow Down (6 page)

“Depends.”

“On?”

“On what I see,” he said. “Go wait in the chapel.”

Another set of narrow stairs led to the third-floor chapel. The narthex had a front door that opened to a mountain road curved like an S and I tried to imagine how this worked. The bereaved came in on the first floor, the dead were embalmed on the second floor, and all of them were driven up the mountain in order to walk into the chapel on the third floor.

And it got weirder inside the chapel, whose entry was a pair of louvered pine panels, like saloon doors from a western movie. The sunlight that streamed through amber stained glass windows barely illuminated the room. Everywhere was dark wood, almost black. The floor, the wall, the peaked ceiling. And the straight-backed pews, rows of dark wood, resembled open coffins. Above them, tarnished brass sconces held white candles gummed with dust.

This place felt haunted.

I was turning to leave when my cell phone rang.

Allen McLeod. Calling from Seattle.

“The Alaska office wants us to take it,” he said.

I dropped into a pew. “May I ask why?”

“Nobody's available. It's that simple. Our closest office is Juneau, and that's just a resident agency with two guys covering all of southeastern Alaska. They're both working urgent cases. And Anchorage can't spare anybody either. So if this thing turns into a case, Raleigh, it's yours.”

Resident agencies were FBI outposts in the hinterlands, where agents handled everything from mail delivery to mail fraud to murder.

“They don't have anybody?” I asked.

“The SAC”—Special Agent in Charge—“pointed out that you're already on the ship. Plus it left from Seattle, and it'll return here too. Technically, he can make the argument that the case would belong to this office.”

I could smell dust in the chapel air and the acidic scent of old stained wood. When I didn't reply, McLeod said, “Look on the bright side, Raleigh. Maybe she killed herself. Anything from the coroner?”

I told him what Geert explained to me: Nautical law dictated that a cruise ship go to the first port with a funeral home. In this case, Ketchikan. If the death was deemed suspicious, the body went to that state's medical examiner. In Alaska, that meant Anchorage. “I'm waiting to hear if the mortician agrees this looks suspicious.”

“Okay, if it's not suspicious,” McLeod said brightly, “you can go back to your vacation.”

Dread buckled down on my neck. “Yes, sir.”

“I see you've still got that ‘sir' habit.”

“I'm sorry, I'm—”

“From the South, I know. But whenever you call me ‘sir,' I feel like a country pumpkin.”

Mentally inserting “bumpkin” for “pumpkin,” I promised to call when the mortician finished the examination.

Closing the phone, I walked down the chapel's middle aisle, fingering dust on the candles, taking in the place's muted amber glow. And I tried to kick self-pity to the curb. My last vacation was six years ago, the summer before my father was murdered. We went rock hunting in North Carolina, searching Pressley Mine for sapphires. Now here was Alaska, every geologist's dream, and I was stuck in some funeral home lifted from the Twilight Zone, awaiting a verdict whose conclusion I already knew: her death
was
suspicious. The issue was jurisdiction: I had none.

Stepping through the translucent beams of dusty sunlight, I glanced at my watch. My heart tightened. I hated this feeling. This pity for myself. Willing myself not to check the time again, I stared at the cavernous pulpit. After several excruciating minutes, I sat down and picked up a hymnal from the bench. I fluttered the pages, feeling the soft, almost slippery pages. They had the atmospheric damp of books stored in wet basements. After several more minutes, I grabbed the Bible next to it, impatiently fluttering again until I saw the words. They had no phonetic resemblance to English. I flipped to the front and saw that it was a translation into Tlingit, the local Native language. The book of John read,
Dikée Ankáwoo doo Yéet dàt John-ch kawshixidee Yoox'utúnk
. Searching for other passages, I found a small scrap of paper in the book of Habakkuk. The crude handwriting flowed with divine wisdom.

Sometimes We gots to Wate
, it said.

Not a bad summary of Habakkuk, I decided. And a fair comment on my own circumstances. But self-pity told me I'd been waiting forever. Waiting for my mother to get well. Waiting for justice for my father. Waiting for love.

I shook off the next thought—did I really love DeMott, or did I love the idea of settling down?

The saloon doors swung open and dust motes exploded through the amber sunlight. The mortician strode down the aisle wearing rubber boots and his apron. The doors squeaked back and forth behind him, making him seem like some demented gunslinger.

“She had a face-lift,” he said, as though uncovering the real crime. “I found scars behind her ears. It wasn't a bad lift. Somebody also cauterized the capillaries around her eyes, you know, lasering off her bags.”

To emphasize his findings, he pointed to the shiny pouches beneath his own eyes. Avaricious eyes.

“So we can rule out the idea she killed herself over wrinkles.”

“How do you know she didn't lower herself down there? She could've hung there until it was lights-out.”

“Climbing down there would require superhuman upper-body strength. And she's not a small woman.”

“One hundred seventy-two pounds.”

“At night, on the open sea.”

He wagged his head, as if still not ready to concede suicide. “Stick your head in some rope, hang a minute, you're about done. That's what those teenagers don't realize, going for the cheap sex thrill. Not that there's another kind in Ketchikan.”

“What about her neck?” I said, trying again. “How much damage did you see?”

“Not much,” he agreed.

“That doesn't strike you as suspicious?”

“But I'm supposed to say if it's possible she killed herself. The answer is, yeah, it's possible.”

“Possible is not the same as likely.” I felt my temper rising. The man was both morbid and obstinate. “And it isn't probable either. What I'm asking is, after what you saw, is it
probable
she killed herself?”

“I don't want to be in the middle of this.”

“The middle of what? She's dead.”

“But famous.”

“The
husband'
s famous,” I clarified, hoping to encourage his spine.

“Okay, whatever. It means they'll run something about it on television, one of those shows about celebrity deaths. And they'll make me look like an idiot, some hick mortician in Ketchikan. What do you think people do around here when it rains all year? They watch TV. I'll be the biggest joke in town.”

I restrained the urge to tell him he probably was already. “You're saying the exam was inconclusive?”

“No. I'm saying I got second thoughts. Let the medical examiner in Anchorage go on the line. Let him deal with the reporters.” He pointed to the floor. “I just put her in a shipping container. If the weather holds, a plane can get her out today.”

On the one hand, I agreed with his decision; I'd rather have an ME's ruling. But the greatest enemy for solving any crime was time. And this invertebrate was wasting time, all but admitting Judy Carpenter's death was highly suspicious—but he didn't want the responsibility of saying it. He would still collect his pickup fee from the cruise line, and I suspected he might call the
Enquirer
later, to find out how much they paid for an anonymous description of her cosmetic surgery.

“How long does that take, sending the body to the MEA?”

“A day to fly it up there, then it goes to the morgue. A real morgue, like what you got in the lower forty-eight.”

Five days remained on the cruise. Five days to figure out what happened to this woman and who did it. But with the body transport, it left four days. Two thousand passengers, and a husband who was an actor. A man paid to pretend.

“Once her body gets to the medical examiner, how long then?”

“Then it's get in line.” He shrugged. “All those tourists want to see Alaska before they die, so the morgue's a busy place.”

I jogged down Creek Street's creosote timbers, darting around tourists who carried bulging plastic bags filled with souvenir hats and shirts. When I reached Mission Street, I slowed to a walk, then stopped at Whale Park and called McLeod. I told him about the body being shipped to the ME in Anchorage.

“So her death is suspicious,” he said.

“Not officially.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means the mortician is a coward. He won't come right out and say it's suspicious. And I don't expect anyone from the cruise line to disagree. Murder doesn't exactly make you want to get on board the ship.”

“Neither do suicides,” McLeod pointed out.

“Except suicide isn't seen as the ship's fault.”

“Good point. What about next of kin?”

“No children.” This was something I'd asked Geert. And it
wasn't
a stupid question.

“Did you get to talk to him?”

“Carpenter? I asked if she'd been depressed.” I described the rest of this morning's scene—Carpenter staggering to the body, showing shock and sadness, comforted by Sandy Sparks, the producer, then being whisked away so photographs wouldn't show up in the tabloids. “His reaction wasn't what I'd expect from a man whose wife was just found dead.”

“So right now, the only person who thinks she was murdered is you?”

I stared at the mountains. Steep forests layered their sides. Ocean water curled like liquid mercury around their feet. McLeod sighed. A man of prodigious sighs, his lungs moved air like ancient leather bellows.

“Sir, I'd like nothing more than to tell you this woman ended her own life. But facts say otherwise. A killer is on that ship and if we don't find him, he walks away a free man.” I stopped, afraid my voice sounded strident.

“Don't ever change, Raleigh.” The air bellowed again. “It's good you're like this. Good for us. Not so good for you.”

“It's fine, sir.”

“That's what you always say. But I want to send you some help on this.”

I felt the weight lift from my shoulders, the tension in my neck easing. “Thank you, sir. I'd appreciate some help.”

“Great. Jack can be there by this afternoon.”

“What—pardon? Jack?”

“I sent out a squad e-mail after the Alaska office passed. Said it was a free cruise to Alaska, which it sort of is. Jack was the first to reply. His plane's ready to go.”

I felt sick. “Plane?”

“He's a Bureau pilot. Didn't you know? Keeps his own plane.”

What I knew about Jack Stephanson was this: he was a complete jerk. During my disciplinary transfer to Seattle, Jack was assigned to help ease my transition into the new field office. Help the new kid. Instead he hazed, harassed, and mocked me, before finally admitting his initial goal was to flush me from the FBI. And if that wasn't enough, before I went back to Virginia, he'd had the gall to ask for a date.

“He needs to know when your ship leaves Ketchikan.”

We leave in five minutes
, I wanted to lie.
Don't bother sending him
.

Lifting my face to the sun, feeling the sting of self-pity in my eyes, the happy tourists flowed like a river around me. Across the street, on the totem pole, a raven perched and cawed with harsh laughter. I agreed it was quite the joke: my “help” was Jack Stephanson.

“Thank you for offering, sir, but on second thought, it's better if I handle this myself.”

“Nonsense, Raleigh. You're looking a gilt horse in the mouth.”

I had rules about lying. Really. In their way, they were strict rules. It was permissible to lie in order to protect my mother's mental health. Or if the Bureau sent me undercover. Otherwise lying still ranked with the other nine commandments.