“And I’ll bet you’ve even got an idea who did it,” she added.
“According to Danitza, her father had a temper. He was also beyond furious when he found out she was pregnant.”
“Can’t say as I blame him,” Harriet Raines allowed. “Under the circumstances I’m pretty sure I’d be furious, too, but there’s angry and then there’s homicidal. Do you think it’s possible this Mr. Adams might be responsible for whatever happened to Christopher?”
Harriet might not have been taking notes, but if she had plucked that name detail out of what I’d just told her in casual conversation, she had definitely been paying attention.
“I don’t know that for sure,” I said, “but I’d certainly like to have the opportunity to ask him about it face-to-face.”
A long, thoughtful silence ensued. At first I wondered if she was about to send me packing. Instead, while I watched and waited for Harriet Raines to say something more, an odd thing happened. A subtle change came over her, as though she’d just made up her mind about something.
At that point the very atmosphere in the room suddenly shifted. It was as if some kind of emotionally charged barometer had just dropped. Even though I hadn’t said a word, Harriet nodded as if I had. Then she picked up the bottle of Crown Royal and the clean glass she’d offered me earlier and shoved both of them into the bottom drawer of her desk. Next, after stubbing out her smoldering cigar, she turned back to me with yet another appraising look.
“What do you know about bears?” she asked.
That question, coming out of the blue, caught me totally off guard and left me thinking I had somehow missed a turn and wound up in a whole other conversation.
“Not very much,” I admitted. “Why?”
“We have a lot of ’em up here,” she replied, “all kinds—black, brown, grizzly, and polar. When it comes to bears, Alaska is all for diversity.”
It took a second for me to realize that “Cold Case” Harriet Raines had just cracked another joke. By my count that was number two. She was on a roll.
“And we’ve got a bunch of people around here,” she continued, “naturalists, biologists, and the like, who make it their business to know everything there is to know about those different kinds of bears. Some of those folks go out in the wild each spring to track down hibernating bears in their dens and put battery-powered collars on the big ones and tag the little ones.”
“Not my kind of job,” I said.
At that point Harriet actually smiled at me. “Not mine either,” she agreed.
With that, Professor Harriet stood up abruptly. “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She collected her empty soup bowl and spoon as well as her empty glass and placed all those items on a serving tray that was sitting on the credenza behind her desk. Then, after donning a lab coat from a nearby coat tree, she picked up the tray and headed for the door.
“Oh,” she added as an afterthought while pausing in the doorway, “would you care for some coffee?”
“Please,” I said.
“It’s instant.”
“That’s fine,” I told her. “I’m not fussy.”
“How do you take it?”
“Black.” I answered.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
Through the glass walls of her office, I watched Harriet’s progress through the lab, turning on lights as she went. Eventually she paused in an area that appeared to be a tiny kitchenette where she put her dirty dishes in a sink and switched on an electric kettle. At the far end of the lab, she stopped in front of another door where she had to punch a code into an electronic keypad to unlock it. She disappeared inside, letting the door close behind her,
Several long minutes passed before she emerged once more. She did so carrying a banker’s box. The contents couldn’t have been very heavy, because small as she was, she appeared to carry the weight with little or no effort. She deposited the box on the lab table closest to her office door and then beckoned for me to come join her, which I did. As I approached, I caught a glimpse of the label on the end of the box, which read “Geoffrey. 4/25/2008.”
“Bones?” I asked.
Harriet nodded. “Not just bones,” she replied with a smile, “my personal specialty—unidentified bones. A lot of the time when skeletal human remains are located in wilderness areas, they turn out to be Alaska Natives, indigenous people who succumbed to natural causes decades earlier. Often we locate remains of people like hunters, hikers, or skiers who wander out into the woods and end up dying due to misadventure such as accidental falls or drownings. Occasionally we find the remains of homicide victims, and that’s apparently the case with this one,” she added, giving the lid of the box what appeared to be an almost affectionate pat.