The Alpine Christmas (2 page)

“I’ll go sit with Father,” said Ben, giving me a punch in the upper arm. “Later, Sluggly.”

I took my cue and headed out into a world of white. My green Jaguar was the only car in the lot between the church and the school. St. Mildred’s had been built shortly after World War I, a white frame structure that would have been right at home in New England. The rectory, which was connected to the church by a covered walk, was of the same vintage, a one-story frame house with a basement, and enough room for two priests as well as a housekeeper. The parochial school was much newer, from the early Fifties, with a beige brick facade, an even newer gymnasium, and a school hall that also served as a lunchroom. The convent had stood behind the church, approximately where my car was now parked. About twenty years ago, when the shortage of nuns forced the school to hire lay teachers, vexed parishioners refused to pay for renovation of the convent. The archbishop had gotten a bit vexed as well, and had ordered the
convent razed. Any nuns who taught at St. Mildred’s were forced to live elsewhere. At present, there were two, Sister Clare and Sister Mary Joan, who shared an apartment in a three-story building across the street.

The Jag started immediately, and I drove carefully into the drifting flakes, hearing my chains grind and crunch. Alpine is built on a mountainside, which makes for very dicey driving in the winter. I eased my way down Fourth Street, past the Baptist Church, Mugs Ahoy, the local bank, and finally, the intersection at Front Street. The newspaper office was across the street, repainted a tasteful light blue after its brief passage of egg-yolk yellow during a film crew’s location shoot the previous summer.

Ed Bronsky’s station wagon was pulled up to the curb, as was the white Buick sedan that belonged to my House & Home editor, Vida Runkel. My sole reporter, Carla Steinmetz, had probably walked to work, as had our office manager, Ginny Burmeister. Carla had owned a car of sorts when she first arrived in Alpine after graduating from the University of Washington a year and a half ago, but she had turned it in last September for a motor scooter. Naturally, it didn’t work very well in the snow, but neither did Carla. In fact, Carla didn’t work very well under any conditions, but at least she was enthusiastic.

Vida was playing the trombone. Badly. I winced and put my gloved hands over my ears. “Stop!” I shrieked. “Why are you doing that?”

Vida gave one last toot and put the trombone down on the empty chair next to her desk. “It was stolen from the high school last night. Somebody broke into the band room. My nephew Billy found it this morning at the base of Carl Clemans’s statue in Old Mill Park.” She rummaged under her desk. “There’s a piccolo, too. And a pair of drumsticks.”

Bill Blatt was not only Vida’s nephew—as I sometimes thought half of Alpine was—but also a deputy sheriff. “So
why didn’t Billy take the instruments back to the high school?”

Vida, who is in her early sixties, and exudes an aura of rumpled majesty, shrugged her wide, multilayered shoulders. “He intended to, but he got a call from the sheriff, so he left them here. For the time being.”

“Milo was having a cow,” said Carla, bouncing up from her chair and looking like a Christmas elf in her red parka. “He raised his voice on the phone. I actually
heard
him.”

I gazed at Carla. Excitement did not become Sheriff Dodge. Carla, I felt, must be exaggerating. “I thought Milo was taking the morning off to go steelheading.”

Ed looked up from a dummy ad for Barton’s Bootery. He was wearing an old overcoat that was two sizes too small for his ever-expanding girth. “Why bother? Fishing’s terrible around here these days. I haven’t gone out in five years.”

An eternal pessimist, Ed probably wouldn’t have hit the Skykomish River if a twenty-pound steelhead had flopped onto his desk. “Milo caught two last winter,” I remarked, taking off my purple car coat and discovering that the news office was freezing. “What happened to our heat?”

Ed gave me a doleful look. “It broke. The Public Utility District’s having problems. They’re going to try to fix it by this afternoon.”

“Great.” I gazed down at the baseboard that ordinarily would be emitting comfortable waves of warmth. Stubbornly, I refused to put my car coat back on. I might not be a native Alpiner, but I wasn’t going to give in to a spate of twenty-degree weather. “Okay, so what’s with Milo?” I inquired, getting back to the sheriff’s uncustomary state of excitement.

But Ed was picking up the phone, Carla was rocketing off to the front office, and Vida was typing sixty-to-the-dozen on her battered old upright. Vida, however, had the courtesy to eye me over the rims of her tortoiseshell glasses. “Milo
was disturbed. He didn’t tell Billy why.” She kept right on typing.

A car wreck, I decided, and no wonder, what with the compact ice under the fresh snow. Even with four-wheel drive or chains, there were plenty of accidents not only in town, but out on the pass. I went into my office, which felt like a deep freezer. Trying not to let my teeth chatter, I wished for once that I didn’t have a fear of portable heating units. But my career as a reporter on
The Oregonian
had included too many gruesome stories about people who had died in fires caused by plug-in heaters. I’d rather watch my breath come and go in little puffs while my knees knocked together under my desk.

The best cure for freezing, I decided, was work. It was Tuesday, after all, and our deadline for the weekly edition of
The Advocate
. Despite a sagging economy and Ed Bronsky’s best efforts to discourage advertisers, we were putting out a thirty-six-page paper, crammed with holiday specials. It was a good thing, since we were running light on real news. This was the season for Vida to shine, with plenty of party coverage, charity functions, and how-to holiday articles. I’d allotted her six pages this week, but of course they were all inside. The front page was unusually bland; Carla’s lead story recounted the city council’s decision to allow a ten-foot plastic Santa Claus to tower over Old Mill Park.

“It will blow away,” said council president and ski lodge manager Henry Bardeen.

“It will detract from the memorial to our town’s founder, Carl Clemans,” said council secretary and apparel-shop owner Francine Wells.

“It will be the target of every snowballer and potshot artist in town,” said council member and building contractor Arnold Nyquist.

“It will be an appropriate seasonal reminder, and a compromise in response to criticism of the manger scene that has stood in Old Mill Park every Christmas since 1946,” said
Mayor Fuzzy Baugh. “Let it not be said that the City of Alpine is insensitive to those who do not share basic Christian beliefs. No matter how misguided, these fine folks still vote.” Fuzzy was your basic Baptist.

He was also a savvy politician, but his quote needed pruning. I was about to exercise my editor’s pencil when the phone rang. It was Milo Dodge. He didn’t sound excited so much as disturbed.

“Emma, can you come over for a minute?”

I started to fabricate an excuse, then realized that Milo’s office might have heat, and said I could. The Skykomish County Sheriff’s office was only two blocks away, after all. “Shall I pick up some doughnuts?” The Upper Crust Bakery had recently moved into the space formerly occupied by the hobby and toy shop, which had graduated to the Alpine Mall. The town’s original source of baked goods had dried up three years earlier when its current owner had left Alpine to dry out and had never come back. The Upper Crust was owned by a pair of upstarts from Seattle who had a yen for the wide open spaces—and cheap real estate prices. Their baked goods were fabulous.

But Milo declined. “Just come over, quick as you can,” he said, then hastily added a word of warning: “Be careful—it’s slippery out there.”

I agreed not to turn cartwheels on Front Street. After putting on my car coat, I trudged over to the bakery, which was closed. No heat, I supposed. No ovens, no doughnuts. The marzipan reindeer in the window display looked as if they were seeking shelter in the gingerbread house. Next door, Parker’s Pharmacy was open, but I noticed that the clerks were wearing heavy sweaters and the fluorescent lighting had taken on a jaundiced tinge. Across the street, the Burger Barn was completely dark.

Luckily, Milo isn’t afraid of space heaters. He had a large one going full tilt next to his desk. I sat down opposite him
and cozied up to the glowing coils. Milo asked Bill Blatt to bring me a cup of coffee.

“At least the lights work,” I noted, though they gave an ominous flicker even as I spoke. “What happened?”

Milo thought I meant him, rather than the PUD. He shook his head slowly, incredulously. “Emma, it was the damnedest thing. I hit the river above Anthracite Creek, six miles down the highway. I got there just before first light. Jack Mullins got a twelve-pounder in that hole Saturday morning,” he went on, referring to another of his deputies. “Within the first fifteen minutes, I had a couple of bumps. I was sure it was going to be my lucky day.”

Milo paused as Bill Blatt brought my coffee. I could visualize the scene, the river rushing among big boulders, the leaden sky overhead, the freezing air, the wind cutting to the bone, the snow swirling everywhere. Perfect steelheading weather. Only a true masochist could love the sport.

“And?” I encouraged Milo after Bill had made his exit.

Milo leaned on his elbows. He was a big shambling man in his mid-forties, with sharp hazel eyes, graying sandy hair, and a long face with a square jaw. It was a nice face, even an attractive face, though I made a point of not usually acknowledging the fact. When it came to the male-female thing, Milo and I had our own agendas. Or so it seemed.

“Then something really hit,” Milo continued, his high forehead creasing. “It didn’t feel like a fish, but it didn’t seem like a snag, either. I let the line play out a little, but there wasn’t any fight. So I started to reel in. I damned near died when I saw what I had.” Milo gulped, blanched, and gave a shudder. Impatient, I stared at his stricken expression. He’d been the sheriff of Skykomish County for over eight years. Surely he’d seen it all.

“Well, what was it?” I demanded.

He passed a big hand over his face. “It was a leg, Emma. A human leg. And it was still wearing a tennis shoe. With no sock.”

I felt a bit pale, too. For a long moment, Milo and I stared at each other across the desk. Finally, I spoke, my voice a trifle weak: “What did you do with it?” I clutched at my Styrofoam cup, feeling the warmth, but not benefitting from it.

Having related his grisly tale, Milo sat back in his chair. His color was returning, but he was shaking his head again. “I had a big garbage bag in the Cherokee Chief, so I got it and put the thing in it. Then I came back here and called Bill and Jack to come over quick. Doc Dewey will do the rest. I tell you, Emma, it’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen in twenty-five years of law enforcement.”

I sipped my coffee and reflected. We could get the story on page one, but it wouldn’t run more than a couple of inches. Later, when and if we knew more, we could do a detailed article. Over the past two or three years, several body parts had been hauled out of rivers in Snohomish and King counties. This, however, was a first for Skykomish.

“So it’s all up to Doc?” I inquired. Gerald Dewey, M.D., known locally as young Doc, had recently taken over not only his late father’s practice, but old Doc’s coroner’s duties as well.

Milo nodded. “It’s pretty routine. Try to make an ID, figure out time and cause of death. If foul play is suspected, then we go to work.” Draining his mug with its NRA emblem, Milo seemed to have regained his composure. He actually
chuckled. “Weird, huh? Except for a couple of those Snohomish County cases, nobody’s been able to figure out if we’ve got another serial killer or a lot of accident-prone people in western Washington.”

“Or too many nuts living in the woods and playing with their Skilsaws,” I remarked.

“Always a possibility,” agreed Milo. “City people don’t realize how many goof balls take to the high country. Recluses who were strange to start with and keep getting stranger.”

“Transients, too,” I pointed out. “Either as victim or as hermit. Or both. Do you figure this was a man?”

Milo turned serious again. “My guess is that it was a woman, or maybe a kid. It had been in the river a long time. I’ll spare you the decomposition details, but judging from the sockless tennis shoe alone, I’d say maybe two or three months.”

I was grateful to be spared. One of my flaws as a journalist is my squeamish stomach. “Will you check out a list of missing persons?”

Milo gave a grunt of assent. “It won’t do much good. Nobody I know of is missing around here, except for the usual wandering husband or fed-up wife. If it’s a juvenile, we’d have a better chance—most of them are on the National Crime Information Center computer. After the Green River killer investigation, there was a move to report missing prostitutes on a national basis, but the truth is that the people who first miss them usually aren’t anxious to get tangled up with the law.”

I had taken my notebook out of my handbag and was writing swiftly. Maybe the story could run at least six inches if I included the background Milo was giving me. I could dump all of Carla’s quotes about the plastic Santa and cut the last two grafs of my latest spotted owl piece, which was merely a rehash of the most recent plan to resolve the environment-logging industry controversy.

“Let me know if you find out anything more,” I requested as I stood up, loath to leave the space heater. “We’ve got the rest of the day to get the story in this week’s edition.”

Milo grimaced. “Don’t make me look like a damned fool.”

I cocked my head to one side. “Have I ever?”

The sheriff looked the other way. “No—I can probably manage that on my own.”

“Can’t we all?” I gave him a wave and headed out through the reception area where Arnold Nyquist was pounding his fist on the counter and griping at Jack Mullins. Nyquist was a large, bluff man in his fifties, with a fringe of gray hair and a ruddy complexion. Known to most Alpiners as Arnie, but to some as Tinker Toy, he was the biggest building contractor in Alpine. The nickname had been coined by some wag who didn’t consider Nyquist’s residential dwellings up to snuff. Since three of the thirty homes in the Ptarmigan Tract west of town had collapsed during the early 1980s, the criticism might have been justified. Of late, Nyquist was concentrating on commercial construction.