Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2), Jack Lively [ebook voice reader txt] 📗

you can’t see because the trees are in the way. It’s called Bell Island. They built a Navy installation there in the sixties, but it only really got going in the seventies. Became some kind of research installation by the end of the eighties. By the mid-nineties it was hell bent for leather, all kinds of thinking and calculating and measuring going on in there, not that we know what about exactly. Scientists and experts coming in from the lower forty-eight. Hotels were filled up, restaurants had to up their game for more sophisticated customers. Then by the end of the noughties they didn’t need it anymore and the Navy quit the island.”

I said, “And how does that relate to a dispute about the house?”

She said, “It relates because the property is connected. The Navy requisitioned the island and all the land in proximity. When the property was sold to the present owner, the island came with it. The tribal authorities disputed the sale because it was originally tribal land. It should have reverted to the tribe instead of to a rich guy.”

“The rich guy isn’t First Nations.”

“No, he isn’t.”

I said, “Where’s he from then?”

The woman’s eyes were the color of the sea. She was smiling, which made a few lines crinkle around them. It was attractive. She said, “What do I look like, the town ordinance clerk?”

I thought about June in her chair. I said, “No.”

“Right.” She leaned her hip against the timber cabin framing. “I don’t know where the guy’s from.”

We both looked at the view some more, for maybe two minutes. I looked sideways at her. I already liked the fact that this woman was capable of being in silence. I said, “Sorry to disturb your meditation.”

She smiled. “I wasn’t meditating. I was sitting down and I had my eyes closed.”

“I’m Tom Keeler.”

“Lavinia Stone Chandler.”

“I don’t know if I can say all that.”

“Debatable whether it’s seven or eight syllables. In any case, people here call me Ellie.” I got a chance to sneak a look at her in profile. The light was flattering. She turned to face me again. “Why are you interested in Mister Lawrence?”

I said, “Somebody asked me if I worked for him today.”

“Asked in what context?”

“The context was unpleasant, partially physical. Emotionally violent.”

The skin around Ellie’s eyes went taut, and I had the feeling that she’d shifted in her character. Pragmatic and watchful. She said, “I see.”

“There was something else. When they came to the conclusion that I did work for Mister Lawrence, they were satisfied. The issue being, these weren’t the kind of guys whose satisfaction is valued, broadly speaking. In terms of civics. So, it left me wondering. What kind of work would a person be doing if he worked for Mister Lawrence?”

She looked alerted to the subject. “Yes, that would be the right question to ask. I guess you concluded that it would not be pleasant work.”

I nodded. “Most likely not.”

She examined me in the same way as Jane Abrams had, up and down, and then up again. “Fisherman. But not a fisherman.”

“Was a fisherman for a minute. Now I’m just a guy.”

Ellie shook her head. “Not just a guy.”

“And you?”

She hooked a finger in the hem of her wool shirt and lifted it a couple inches. Under the wool, an olive green undergarment was tucked into jeans. The badge clipped to her belt glinted in the light.

Ellie said, “Chief of Police, Chilkat Tribal Authority.”

Nine

Ellie saw something down below and waved. I looked over the railing. A man and a woman had walked into the clearing from a forest trail.

She said, “My friends. I have to go.”

We came down from the fire tower stairs together, taking our time. Ellie said, “You know the difference between a puzzle and a mystery?”

“I have the feeling you’re going to tell me regardless.”

She said, “That’s what my son always says. With a puzzle, you know there’s something to solve. You just need to find that one piece to complete the picture. With a mystery you don’t know what the final picture is going to be. You don’t even know if there is one. Solving the mystery means finding the puzzle.”

I said, “I was thinking more like I got my foot into someone else’s dog shit.”

Ellie said, “Another way of putting it.”

We came to a platform three or four flights from the ground. I could see her friends now, an older woman and a teenage boy. Ellie turned to me with her hands in her back pockets. “If you’ve still got your boot heel stuck in dog shit, come see me. Might find something lying around that can help you scrape it off.”

I said, “Might come see you anyway.”

She smiled. “You do that.”

Then we walked down the remainder of the stairs. At the bottom, Ellie made a brief introduction. The woman was Helen, and the boy was Hank. Mother and son. Helen was a distracted, academic type. Tall and thin with her hair wound up around a pencil. Hank looked about fifteen or sixteen, weedy, with yellowish skin and black hair hanging below the ears.

Hank looked at me with a famished gaze. I wondered where the father was in this story. The boy wore a leather jacket over a quilted plaid hunting shirt. I figured it might be tough being a teenager in Alaska. Not much to do except hiking and hunting.

The three of them were going for a sunset walk. The fire tower had been the meeting point. I watched Ellie walk away. Striding downhill. She had long legs and the boots made them even longer. Older than me by a decade maybe, but looking good. The sunlight kicked off against her plaited hair, bobbing as she went.

I was going the other way, to Beaver Falls. I figured I would check in on Jane Abrams and see what that was all about. It would be good to surprise her. Maybe I would learn something.

Now that I was interested.

When I reached the road, I swung