“How cold is it in that cave?”
“Say fifty degrees or thereabouts.”
Brillo grunted. “Then I’d say somewhere between Monday night and Tuesday morning.”
What Liam had estimated. “Okay. Thanks, Brillo.”
“Find that fucker, Campbell.”
“I will.”
Liam clicked off and thought bleakly of the new scenario laying itself out before him. If Erik had been attacked at the top of the trail and not the bottom, then anyone of any size or age could have done it without negotiating that killer trail. His pool of potential suspects had grown to include anyone in the general area of the Lower Peninsula on Monday night.
Great.
Eighteen
Friday, September 6
THE NEXT MORNING LIAM WENT STRAIGHT to the post, told his administrative aide that he wasn’t in to anyone who called, and locked himself in his office.
He took a ruler, a pencil, and a blank piece of paper and created a grid. In the central square he wrote “Erik Berglund.” He got out his phone and opened the Notes app and began filling in the squares around Berglund.
Gabe McGuire. Lived almost on top of Erik’s dig. By his own admission had a beef with Berglund over the right of way, but Liam was no scalp hunter and with the best will in the world he couldn’t put McGuire in the frame. He had more to lose than all of the other suspects put together. He had motive and he sure had opportunity, though, so McGuire went in a square next to Erik.
Leonard Needham. Liam had googled him. The list of hits went on for fourteen pages, with some stunt nerds doing—or trying to—YouTube recreations of some of his more famous stunts. The one where he’d jumped from a moving car into a moving plane and then parachuted out of the plane onto the top of a moving semi was among Liam’s least favorites.
He shook his head. Someone who had had his ten best stunts written up in Popular Mechanics with color commentary by a physicist and a mechanical engineer was not likely to orchestrate something as clumsy as murder by blunt instrument and cliff. Further, Needham had advised his nephew to fess up about vacating the right of way. A straight arrow, or wanting to appear like one. Needham wasn’t entirely out of the running, either, but he got a square on the outer edge of the grid.
The Kinnisons and the Reeses both got squares on the outer edge. A cursory troll through state databases showed him that Cynthia Reese was a realtor and her husband owned the go-to local marine supply store. Greg Kinnison was a physical therapist and his wife Grace a dentist. Their only stake here was the ability to brag about being friends with Gabe McGuire. Although they probably wouldn’t object to gating the community, either.
What the hell was it with people who, so long as they had theirs, were no longer willing to share? By law beaches in Alaska were public up to the high water mark but it meant nothing to the general population if there was no access to them. Like Alaska’s national parks and wildlife refuges. You could drive into Denali, you could even drive to the Gates of the Arctic, but Wood-Tikchik and too many others required air transportation, which was never cheap and so out of the reach of most citizens.
Domenica Garland. She was one of McGuire’s nearest neighbors, so opportunity. If Brillo was right, and he usually was, anyone had means. Motive? Plenty, in this case, ranging from the professional to the personal. Personally, she and Berglund had been fuck buddies. She acted like it didn’t matter that it had ended but who the hell knew with women? Professionally, she wanted to drill for oil in the Bay, and Berglund was about to begin a study that might not stop the drilling but it wouldn’t hurry it along, either, especially if Berglund managed to get an entity as high profile as UNESCO involved. Erik had been a good-looking guy and Liam could see her sleeping with him as an exercise in vanity, but killing him over what had appeared to Liam to be a pretty pitiful collection of artifacts seemed extreme, especially in a state with a legislature which regarded the resource extraction industry as a cash cow. God knows the industry had bought enough members of that body their seats. Liam didn’t think Garland regarded Erik Berglund as even the mildest threat to her job or her plans to drill for oil and gas in the Bay. Still, she had more motive than most, so she went into a square next to Erik.
Jeff and Marcy Ninkasi, friendly with everyone, sold beer to everyone, and still would if UNESCO declared the entire lower Kenai a World Heritage Site or RPetCo turned the Bay into the next North Slope. Didn’t live in the neighborhood so no stake in the right of way controversy. Outer edge.
Hilary Houten. Rival archeologist. Liam had seen the dislike between the two of them at Backdraft and the Chamber and heard of it at the party. Houten had forty years on Berglund and Berglund had at least a hundred pounds on Houten. Brillo said Berglund had been struck hard on the side of the head and that the rest of his injuries might have come afterward. Liam couldn’t imagine a scenario involving a physical confrontation between the two, certainly not one that ended with Berglund dead. But professional jealousy was a powerful motivator. He put Houten’s name on a square next to Berglund’s.
Aiden Donohoe and wife Shirley. Classic Alaska Boomer. Dismissive of Berglund’s alleged discoveries. Didn’t live in the neighborhood but would undoubtedly want to cater to Blewestown’s most famous citizen. If Blue Jay Jefferson had just donated fifty large to the Chamber to spur development along, what
