Everything To Prove. Nadia Nichols

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СКАЧАТЬ of her chair. “Take this with you,” she said, reaching onto a shelf and lifting down an old tattered leather-bound journal. “It belonged to Charlie. He scribbled in it ever since I knew him. It was important to him, but his son don’t want it and it don’t do me no good. I can’t read.”

      THERE WERE SEVERAL STORES in Fairbanks that Libby visited after stopping at the warden service’s office to get a copy of Charlie Stuck’s report and before flying to the village the following morning. She bought a pretty dress for her mother, bright with the colors of spring, and outfitted herself for a few weeks in the bush. She had no idea how long it would take for her to accomplish her mission, so she erred on the side of caution with the clothing. Warm long underwear, thick wool socks, serious field boots, a parka that would turn the worst weather, iron-cloth pants, several pairs of warm gloves and a good fleece hat. She packed all of it into a duffel bag in her hotel room near the airport and lastly, before checking out, took one last and very long hot shower, knowing that the amenities in the Alaskan bush wouldn’t be nearly as luxurious as these.

      The flight from Fairbanks to Umiak took two hours, giving her time to reread the photocopy of Charlie Stuck’s official statement regarding the search for Connor Libby’s plane. The report was disappointing. It mentioned the daily weather, the specific grid patterns flown, the pontoons found in the Evening River, and concluded with the assumption that the plane had crashed near the outlet in very deep water. No hidden clues and nothing that Libby didn’t already know.

      Next, she started on Charlie’s journal. She’d already scanned the dates. The entries began four years after the plane crash, but Libby read every single one, hoping he’d make some reference to the crash and the subsequent search, perhaps reflect some of his own theories on what might have happened in a retrospective entry. It was slow reading because Charlie Stuck had terrible handwriting which deteriorated steadily over time. The entire journal spanned almost twenty years, the entries being very brief. A sentence, maybe two. Sometimes months would pass without an entry. The journal read like a warden’s trophy log.

      Caught R. Drew red-handed with twelve over the limit, gave him maximum fine, bastard deserved it.

      There were also entries on the state of wildlife.

      Moose population down fourth year in a row. Hunters are crying wolf. I’m sure it’s poaching. Wolves and moose have always coexisted. Increasing human population and hunting pressure are new on the scene, and where there are humans, there is poaching. No stopping it.

      Libby decided she liked the way Charlie Stuck thought. She pored laboriously over his entries until, finally, she read one that was totally out of context, and the words jumped out at her, causing her to sit up in her seat and bend over the journal.

      Two weeks late to Lana’s due to crash landing the plane in a white-out, bending the prop and being stranded until villagers found me south of the Dome, but she asked no questions. She waits the way that girl Marie waited. Still wonder what became of C. Libby but think my instincts are right about D. Frey. Why didn’t he go to the wedding? (This was underlined twice.) I know

      Frey had something to do with that crash. Wish I could have found that plane. Wish others would have listened to my theory, but money talks loudest and always has.

      Libby read the passage several times, her heartbeat racing, dizzied by the words. Charlie Stuck had believed that Frey had something to do with her father’s death! The rest of the journal revealed nothing relevant to Connor Libby, but that one passage gave her hope that maybe, once the plane was found, others would listen…especially if it could be proved that the crash hadn’t been an accident. Was it possible? Could Frey have deliberately killed her father? Somehow she had to come up with the money to salvage the wreckage!

      The commuter flight stopped in Tanana, Ruby and Galena before landing in the Koyukyuk River, dodging several large ice floes and a flock of Canada geese while taxiing to the village dock. Her gear was put out of the plane and for the first time in six years Libby stood in the village of her childhood. Umiak hadn’t changed much. There were a few more houses, a few more junked vehicles, a few more boats drawn up on the gravel bank next to the fish wheels. The place looked bleak and dreary to her, and she felt guilty for feeling that way. This was, after all, where she’d been born. She waited for a few moments, searching for her mother among the faces, some familiar and some not, who had come to see if the plane had brought mail or supplies, but if Umiak hadn’t changed much in her absence, nothing prepared her for her mother’s appearance.

      Libby felt a jolt clear to the bottoms of her feet when she saw how Marie had aged. Fear clenched her up inside and her heart raced.

      Marie came to a stop at the end of the dock. Her hair had gone almost completely white. She had shrunk. This couldn’t be real. Her mother had always been so strong and vital, the anchoring cornerstone of Libby’s existence, always there for her. Weekly phone conversations had perpetuated the myth that her mother was the same as always, that nothing had changed, yet obviously it had. Libby felt the hot prickle of tears beneath her eyelids.

      “Mom?”

      Marie spotted her and her eyes lit up. “Libby?” She came toward her and raised her arms to clasp her in a trembling embrace. “Libby. It’s good to see you. I’m so glad you came. How long can you stay?”

      Libby hugged her mother gently, kissed the velvet of her cheek, slipped her arm around her mother’s frail shoulders and picked up her duffel. “As long as you want me to. I don’t have to go back to Boston.”

      Confused, Marie looked up at her. “But you work there.”

      “Not anymore. Come on. Let’s go home. I have a pretty dress to give you, and lots of stories to tell.”

      Her mother’s dreary little house was exactly the same. Libby could see that Marie had done nothing with the money Libby had sent her every month. No doubt she had put it all in the bank, saving it just in case times got hard because she didn’t realize that her times were always hard. The furniture was shabby, the linoleum worn almost to the plywood underlayment, the cupboards nearly bare. Libby wanted to rage at her mother one moment, then weep the tears of a heartbroken child the next. While her mother made coffee, she paced the confines of the shoe-box house and looked out the windows as if she were a prisoner. She’d been back less than twenty minutes and already couldn’t wait to escape.

      Marie was happy with the brightly colored dress. She went immediately into her room and put it on. She’d lost so much weight the dress hung from her frame and filled Libby with a terrible premonition. “You look beautiful,” Libby said.

      They drank cups of instant coffee with lots of sugar and powdered creamer. Libby told her mother about her internship at Mass General and the prestigious residency she’d been offered, and that she’d turned it down.

      “Was this residency you were offered like what you were doing before, with the dead bodies?” she asked.

      “Yes.”

      “Then I’m glad you didn’t take it. That isn’t what a doctor should be doing. You should be delivering babies and healing people.”

      “Forensic pathology is just as important, Mom. I can help solve the mysteries of a person’s death. I can help solve murders. But if it makes you feel better, I know how to deliver babies and heal people, too. And as long as we’re speaking of doctors, who’s at the clinic now?”

      “Nobody. We have a doctor who comes in once a month. If there is an emergency we go down to Galena, or to Fairbanks if it’s really bad.”

      Libby СКАЧАТЬ