“Well, shit.” An aggravated sigh. “Put him on a plane.”
“Don’t hang up, Brillo, there’s something else.”
“Color me surprised.” Dr. Hans Brilleaux, the state medical inspector, went heavy on the sarcasm.
“There is another body in the cave, a skeleton. Been there a while, just the bones. I can see it but I can’t get at it yet. I do have one of the hands.”
A huff of exasperation. “Send it up with the body.”
“I want to know if it’s human and how long it’s been there, Brillo.”
“Miracle workers R us.” Click.
Liam lowered his phone.
“It takes thirty-six hours for rigor to go off,” Jo said.
“This is now a crime scene, Jo. I need to ask you to leave.”
“If he’s been lying there for thirty-six hours, how did the boys miss him?”
“Jo.”
“You and what army?” she said impatiently. “How are you going to get the body up that trail?”
He called the post. Ms. Petroff answered. He explained the situation. “I will notify the Blewestown volunteer fire department, sir.”
“We’re sure they will respond all the way out here?”
“The fire department always responds everywhere, sir,” she said, the reproof clear in her tone.
“Thank you, Ms. Petroff.”
Instead of hanging up in her usual efficient fashion, she said hesitantly, “Did I understand you to say that you were at the archeological dig up East Bay Road, sir?”
“You did.”
“And the deceased?”
“We don’t comment on ongoing investigations, Ms. Petroff.”
A brief silence. “I see. Thank you, sir. I will so inform the fire department.” Click.
He stared at his phone. In the entirety of his acquaintance with Ms. Petroff, all one and a half days of it, that was the first time she had requested clarification on any point at issue. Don’t go soft on me now, Ms. Petroff, he thought, and called Wy. “Got a job for you, not a fun one.”
“Do tell.”
He was momentarily distracted by the husky quality of her voice but called himself sternly to order and to duty. “I’ve got a body that needs transporting to Anchorage. The ME’s office will meet you at Merrill to take it off your hands.”
“Height and weight?”
He had never loved her more. “Six foot plus, a hundred and sixty pounds or thereabouts. Maybe less, skinny guy.”
“I’ll head for the airport and start prepping the Cessna.”
“Need a favor.”
“Name it.”
“Those hand bones from yesterday night. I want you to take those to Brillo, too.”
“Sure. Where are they?”
“In my truck.” He looked at Jo, who wasn’t even pretending not to listen. “Jo will bring them to you.”
“Now just a damn minute—”
“Of course,” Wy said.
“Thanks, babe. Usual rates. I’ll clear it through the office.”
“Always a pleasure doing business with the state, Sergeant Campbell.” She paused, and then said delicately, “Someone you know?”
“Unfortunately. One of two possible friends I’ve met since I got here. The archeologist.”
“Oh.” A sigh. “He sounded like a good guy. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Later, babe.”
“Tell Jo I’ll meet her at the airport, and give her the gate code.”
“Wilco.” He clicked off and looked up to see Jo giving him a baleful stare. “You’re all I’ve got, Jo. Please.”
“And it gets me out of your crime scene.”
He didn’t deny it. “There is that.”
She grumbled but she went. He spent the next twenty minutes photographing, measuring, and making notes of the scene with apps on his phone, hoping that Steve Jobs wasn’t going to let him down. When the Blewestown volunteer fire department showed up they galloped down the trail like sherpas. It looked like the entire department had responded, a cross section of locals ranging in age from twenty to sixty, including a muscular, no-nonsense woman who introduced herself as Fire Chief Fiona Rafferty. “Campbell,” she said. “Liam Campbell?”
“Yes.”
“The shootout in the Newenham airport.”
He repressed a sigh. “Yes.”
“Not anyone’s finest hour.”
“No.”
“But not your fault, either.”
He almost smiled. “Thanks.”
Rafferty and her men went to work. They knew what they were doing and had Berglund’s body on a stretcher up the hill very nearly at double time. “Mountain goat DNA” was evidently one of the job requirements.
Liam pulled the chief to one side. “I need some help, Chief.”
“Name it, Sergeant.”
A refreshing relief from Chief Armstrong’s determined indifference, and Liam was relieved. “A couple of kids were in this cave yesterday.”
“They found the body?”
“No. Well, not this one.”
Chief Rafferty had thick, expressive eyebrows and at this point they raised the brim of her ball cap by a quarter of an inch. “‘This one?’”
“They were exploring and they found what they said was a crack that led to a cave behind this one. Evidently it is wide enough for one of them to get stuck in it and while he was stuck he found a skeleton. When they unstuck him he managed to grab the bones of one of the skeleton’s hands.”
Her eyebrows lowered to a level denoting extreme skepticism. “Sergeant Campbell—”
“I know, Chief. I’ve got the bones he recovered on the way to Anchorage to see if they are actually human bones. But could you take a look at the crack and see if there is some way to reach the rest of the skeleton?”
“If it’s that narrow how the hell would anyone get through it to die on the other side in the first place?” But she followed him, grumbling, and then retreated immediately to radio up the hill for one of her remaining cohort to bring down a couple of battery-powered standing lamps. “Need ’em for night fights sometimes,” she said at his glance.
His phone dinged and he pulled it out to see that Wy had texted him.
Taking off. Jo’s coming with. Penis Extender parked at the tie-down, keys behind the visor.
He replied with a heart emoji and didn’t care who saw it.
The lamps improved the view immeasurably, and for the first time Liam realized how big the cave was, the stygian darkness having swallowed so much of it before. Interested in spite of herself, Chief Rafferty joined him in his search, and even then the two
