The Mountains Bow Down Read online

  “Expensive. I can sell them for food when we get fired.”

  “I’ll get fired. You didn’t do anything wrong.” I hesitated. “Did you?”

  “Harmon.”

  “Please, Jack. Thirty minutes.” I reached over, touching my pocket. The stones felt heavier than their actual weight.

  “I didn’t think you had it in you,” he said.

  Neither did I.

  While Jack tried to figure out how to evade Milo, I raced down the stairs, trying to decide who was lying.

  This was Hollywood, after all. Land of make-believe, where lying wasn’t just a profession, it was something you won awards for. It was possible that MJ was covering up an affair with Milo, telling an elaborate and twisted story about an attack. By the time I’d reached Deck Six, it was occurring to me that her hands might be raw from rope burns, and from helping Milo lower his wife over the rail. Since I was passing the hospitality desk, I stopped and asked if the ship had a chaplain. They did, indeed, said the nice clerk behind the counter. I was welcome to leave a message and the chaplain would get back to me. I gave my cell phone number, holding back two questions. One, did the chapel have a cross until Monday night? And two, could the chaplain please pay a visit to my mother in the infirmary?

  I was turning away when the elevator next to the desk binged open. The car was empty and I jumped in, hoping to save time bypassing the crowd in the atrium. I hit the button and was taken immediately to my floor.

  But when the doors opened, I wasn’t on Deck Five, near my cabin.

  I was on Deck Four, staring at the medical clinic. The slow doors didn’t close for a long moment, leaving me to consider my subconscious error for what it was: I’d pressed the wrong button because these gems weren’t the only thing I was feeling guilty about.

  There was no nurse at the circular desk. My mother’s door was partially open. The doctor sat on a rolling stool beside her bed, his Celtic accent like a lullaby.

  “The long journey from Seattle,” he said, “it can weary a soul.”

  From where I stood, I could only see her left hand. Her fingers scrunched the cotton blanket, balling into a fist. “The water is too loud,” she said.

  “Aye, bothers me too. But right now, what I need is a good listen to your lungs. What do you say?” He held the stethoscope, waiting for permission.

  “You won’t hurt me?”

  “No, dear.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Like St. Patrick promises to help the poor.”

  His easy dialogue continued and her fingers released the blanket. The doctor asked her about her family and she mentioned my father; that he was gone. And the sister-in-law who brought her on the cruise.

  The doctor waited. “And your daughter?”

  Silence.

  “You have a daughter?”

  “I have a daughter, back in Virginia.”

  “And a good daughter, she is.” He thought she was confused.

  She wasn’t. My sister Helen was back in Virginia.

  Eyes prickling, I turned to leave.

  I hadn’t heard her approach, but Nurse Stephanie was sitting at the round desk, checking off some paperwork. As I passed by, she did not look up.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Himalayan flute music tooted through the open door that connected my cabin to Aunt Charlotte’s. Sitting on their twin beds, she and Claire faced a purple crystal set on a chair between them like an honored guest. The rock was octahedral—pyramid-shaped at both ends—and lay on its side. Given its dusky color and its shape, I guessed it was fluorite. I wondered what great spiritual properties had been attributed to a mineral used for everything from cavity prevention to rat poison.

  Eyes closed, Claire was emitting that monotonous hum of electricity. Her stout legs bent under her body like soft pretzels. But Aunt Charlotte struggled to hold the pose. Perspiration dewed her forehead and she puffed like a woman in labor. I was tempted to interrupt and tell her what happened in the chapel. But not with Claire around. Closing the door, I decided Claire’s hum didn’t sound electrical as much as entomological. The annoying buzz of an insect. The bug that never lands long enough to swat.

  From the closet, I pulled out the titanium briefcase containing my rock kit and was setting it on the desk when my phone rang. Jack, probably, wondering what was taking so long.

  “I’m hurrying,” I said.

  “Dr. Robert Stoller, Alaska medical examiner.”

  “Oh, hello.”

  “I have a message that there’s an urgent need for information about a deceased female from Ketchikan?” He had the precise diction of an exasperated person.

  “I’m sorry. Yes, sir. I called.” I introduced myself. “Have you had a chance to examine the body?”

  “Not thoroughly. But I was told that you needed information immediately.”

  “That’s correct. The most crucial is cause of death. What’s your verdict?”

  “Juries offer verdicts, Agent Harmon. My opinion, based on a somewhat cursory examination, is that the woman was murdered.”

  I let out a sigh. Finally, somebody agreed. But that relief was swiftly kicked aside by this reality: she was murdered, by somebody on this ship. “Thank you, sir. May I ask what your first clue was?”

  “Clues are for detectives. I search for evidence.”

  “I stand corrected, thank you. What evidence led you to your conclusion?”

  “Granted it was culled from a rather swift examination of the body, due to our present arduous workload. But it was the thoracic area that was troubling. Chest, esophagus, mouth. And the distended tongue.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The tongue. It was protruding.”

  “Yes.” The tongue I saw sticking out, as though mocking somebody. “And what does that mean, Dr. Stoller?”

  “What does it mean?”

  I rephrased. “What does a protruding tongue indicate?”

  “Any number of things. Quite often it indicates asphyxiation. When I examined the back of the throat, I discovered a small white feather. Eiderdown, if I was guessing, which I’m not. Those conclusions must come from the lab. But the feather was clinging to the fleshy mucous membrane on the right.”

  “Her cheek?”

  “In a word, yes. Though the feather was small enough to swallow without interfering with breathing, she didn’t swallow it. Most likely she didn’t have a chance.”

  “Could that feather come from, say, a pillow?”

  “Agent Harmon, please do not waste my time leaping to conclusions. This is Alaska. I’ve seen victims suffocated with down jackets, sleeping bags, even mittens.”

  “Yes, sir. Any signs of sexual assault?”

  “None. None whatsoever. In fact, no recent sexual contact preceding death.” He paused. “Would you care to hear about the facial injuries?”

  “Her neck?”

  “Her face.”

  “Please, continue.” I snapped open my briefcase.

  “Deep contusions spread down to the palatine bone and nasal cavity, most likely from applied pressure.”

  “A pillow over the face?”

  “You persist in assuming. Apparently you’re not acquainted with the adage?”

  “Sir, I’m from the South. I’ve heard a lot of sayings.”

  “Indeed,” said the doctor. “This one might sound vulgar initially, but it functions as a quite powerful mnemonic device. Would you care to hear it?”

  “Please.”

  “The way to remember how to spell ‘assume’ is to recall that the word puts an ‘a-s-s’ in front of ‘u’ and ‘m-e.’”

  I almost laughed.

  “And thus, assuming nothing, I cannot say how she was suffocated. Only that I’m fairly certain she was suffocated.”

  This conclusion would have been gold two days ago. But today was Friday, already midday, meaning it would be even more difficult to reach attorneys and judges in Seattle, particularly in summer. Then again, if I could tie her
death to the drugs from Ramazan’s cabin . . .

  “Dr. Stoller, were you able to run the toxicology?”

  “My assistant sent samples to the lab. When the results are available, my office will contact you. At this number?”

  “Yes, sir. How long?”

  “Six weeks.”

  I held back my startled response. Six weeks, before we knew if she had drugs in her system?

  “Your silence is deafening,” said the doctor. “Allow me to explain. Our toxicology samples are sent to a lab in western Massachusetts because our state legislators in their elected wisdom decided it would be less expensive than building a laboratory in Anchorage. But they failed to factor in the myriad costs that are incurred waiting for results to return from the other side of the country, a wait frequently exacerbated by weather delays both in Alaska and in Massachusetts. These delays often force law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, to suspend cases, only to reopen them as the information becomes available. As you well know, that suspension process is not inexpensive.”

  “So the legislature assumed it could save money.”

  He paused. “Agent Harmon, for that interjection alone, should you have further questions you may call my cell phone directly.” He rattled off the numbers and said, “It’s been pleasant chatting.”

  My titanium rock kit was three inches deeper than a standard briefcase. The first layer held mundane objects. Things like Ziploc bags, tweezers, Sharpies, a jeweler’s loupe. The second layer was more specific: two-millimeter dowels sharpened to points capable of picking up a single grain of sand; the rock hammer Geert allowed me to keep on board; an unglazed ceramic tile; a small shortwave black light. I brought the rock kit on the trip because of the fun I would have collecting and documenting Alaska specimens—pyrite, malachite, galena, bornite—but now it was all about two unknown stones taken from the dead woman’s jewelry box, a move that risked my job.

  Ignoring my churning emotions, I carried calipers, latex gloves, the jeweler’s loupe, sunglasses, the black light, and a pocket guide to gems and crystals into the bathroom. What I didn’t take was an evidence log sheet that asked questions I couldn’t answer: specimen, location, where found. Especially not where found.

  I locked the door and stoppered the sink and placed the stones on a white washcloth. The blue stone sparkled as if sliced from the Alaskan sky, a heavenly blue, a layered world beckoning. The black prism had a dark mysterious beauty. It didn’t charm; it challenged. Like a cave in a bleak fairy tale, its reflective surface said, Enter at your own risk. I used the calipers to measure each stone, then matched its cut to a gem chart in my pocket guide. The blue stone was not cabochon after all; it was a round brilliant, coming in at twelve carats. If this thing was a sapphire, or tanzanite, or some rare blue diamond, the price tag just blasted past six-figure range.

  And in some minds, worth killing for.

  The black stone was more difficult to measure. Its extended prismatic shape turned my estimate into a rough guess, about eight carats. When I checked it with the jeweler’s loupe, I saw no fractures, no fissures inside, and no veins of contaminating minerals, not even one varicose of quartz. But it didn’t look synthetic either. Grown naturally, with the mirrored facets geologists called high schistosity, the stone was extremely rare.

  And I had even less idea what it was.

  I picked up the blue gem again. At twenty-times magnification, the loupe revealed several linear surface scratches along the stone’s base. Marks left by a former jewelry setting, perhaps. Hefting the stone in my hand, it seemed too big for a ring, but this was Hollywood. I picked up the square tile and drew the gem’s bottom across the unglazed surface. Sapphire had no “streak,” since corundum was the second hardest mineral on earth, harder than ceramic tile, but when I raised the square to the bathroom light and tilted it, I could see a white line, like chalk. The stone streaked white, which took sapphire off the list of possibilities.

  I tried the black prism next. It left a brown streak, the color of dried blood, which often indicated trace amounts of iron. But as the pathologist pointed out, assuming was a fool’s game.

  The shortwave black light was the last of my tests. Halloween haunted houses and discos used long-wave black light, which was kinder to the human eye. Shortwave could damage the retina and cause cataracts, so I slid on my sunglasses and flicked off the bathroom light. I aimed the lamp directly at the stones.

  The black gem disappeared.

  But the blue gem glowed so brightly that I jumped back, hitting the shower.

  Under black light, a handful of minerals were known to fluoresce. Sulfur and calcium were the most common, along with fluorite—the mineral that the glowing phenomena was named after. But this fluorescence was off the scale, a neon blue so intense that when I closed my eyes, yellow orbs were swimming across my eyelids, my optical cones saturated with blue.

  Blinking, I reached out for the black specimen and held it under the ultraviolet light. The prismatic shape reminded me of a dagger. Tapping my fingertip on a pointed end, I felt a shiver down my spine.

  “Raleigh?”

  The stone slipped out of my fingers.

  “Are you in there?” my aunt asked.

  I gasped and caught the thing just before it hit the counter.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Yes, Aunt Charlotte.” Hands shaking, I unplugged the lamp, flicking on the light. “I’m in here.”

  “Did you just turn on the light?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why were you in the dark?”

  This, from a woman who was just worshiping a rock, with the buzzing human insect.

  “I needed to rest my eyes.” My mind filled with images of the prism cracking on the floor and me putting it back broken in the jewelry box. I took off my latex gloves and dog-eared the page in my pocket guide on fluorescence, then laid a towel over the supplies.

  “Did you find Nadine, was she in the chapel?”

  When I opened the door, my aunt’s flame-hued hair radiated from ear to ear, as if Claire’s crazy current jumped through space and electrocuted my aunt.

  “Mom’s in the infirmary.”

  “She’s sick?”

  I started to tell her the rest but Claire trundled around the corner. She had a similar windblown appearance.

  “It was the cod,” Claire said. “We both ordered it last night. I’ve been running to the toilet ever since.”

  “It’s not the cod.” I looked at my aunt, hoping she would read my thoughts. But she was giving me a blank look. “It’s not the food.”

  Then it hit her. Her hands flew to her face and stayed there.

  I nodded.

  “What’s wrong?” Claire demanded. “What’s going on? Is Nadine dying?”

  “Dying?” I said. “Who said anything about dying?”

  “I can feel a spirit of death on this boat. And between you and me, Nadine looks half gone.”

  “You know what’s half gone, Claire? Your mind.” I pointed a finger at her. “And it’s because of you she’s suffering, opening your big mouth about my job and contacting my dad and now—”

  “Raleigh,” she said, “somebody’s going to die on this boat.”

  “Somebody did, you moron.”

  “Raleigh!” cried my aunt.

  Claire took her arm. “Tell her, Charlotte. Tell her how I can predict these things. Remember how I saved Beryl?”

  My aunt said, “I told you how she saved Beryl—”

  “Your cat.”

  Claire said, “I’m connected to all creatures.”

  “Don’t go near my mother.” I narrowed my eyes. “If I see you within fifty yards, I’ll throw you overboard.”

  Claire stomped out of the room, then slammed the door between our cabins.

  A beautiful sound.

  Then I told my aunt about the chapel, my mother carving her face. How the doctor subdued her and how she wouldn’t be leaving the medical clinic until we reached Seattle. By the
time I finished, Aunt Charlotte was leaning against the wall, looking like she might slip down the length of it.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She said nothing. She only sighed. And her bosom heaved with the depth of it.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I crossed the atrium with my hands in my pockets, covering the stones and feeling a heat radiating from them, searing my conscience. I climbed the spiral stairwell and vaguely heard the ship’s historian down in the lobby giving a lecture on Skagway, tomorrow’s port of call. Gateway to the 1890 Yukon gold rush, Skagway was a highlight on the travel itinerary.

  But not mine.

  I took the stones to get answers. What I got were questions.

  Every cabin contained a safe, why didn’t Judy Carpenter use theirs? Better yet, why did she bring these gems on a cruise, when they couldn’t be worn? And why did Milo give her a jewelry box, with a loving inscription, right before filing for divorce?

  By the time I reached the top of the stairs, more questions mounted and I felt the familiar sensation that I was holding a large map marked by a giant X—and no paths showing me how to get there. In some ways, every one of my cases felt like that, as if for eight years I’d been waking up to some continuing dark adventure that began: Here be monsters. That lost territory would require crossing again and again, and questions would always outnumber answers. Discouragement would claw at hope. Fear tearing at joy. And my only comfort was paradox. Deep inside, I could sense the unfathomable certainty that life did not rise randomly. By its own laws of mathematics and physics, the natural world disqualified itself from statistical accident. Planetary splendor above and atomic structure below, a world operating with breathtaking genius and design, all of this implying necessarily a designer. Chaos came in the moment, from my paltry human perspective, and most important of all, when the monsters roared, when I flailed haplessly through the swamps, forever asking outsized questions, somebody stood ready to provide comfort.

  I was walking toward the movie set when the full burden of my choice struck, hitting the back of my knees like a lead pipe. I was impatient. Headstrong. Greedy. I was greedy for answers. And for control. Taking these stones could get me fired from the FBI, and that wasn’t near the worst of it. My choice sent me into exile, severed from the one force capable of repelling the monsters. And walking with me.