Mort opened and closed his mouth twice before any sound came out. Finally he cleared his throat and managed, ‘Well, but Alice—’
‘What?’
‘He was in the fire. That’s where they found him. In Grizzly Gulch, the hottest spot in the whole fire, all burned up.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, he can’t be in the fire and not in the fire. Come on. What are you trying to say?’
‘I believe the doctors are trying to say that he must have been dead before he got to Meredith Mountain.’
‘Got to …’ Mort leaned back in his big, padded chair and stared at the ceiling light. ‘Isn’t got what you English teachers call an active verb?’
‘Uh … yes.’
‘So how did this dead person get so active that he got to Meredith Mountain?’
‘Ha!’ She turned to Stuart. ‘Did you hear that? The publisher just did a gotcha on the English teacher!’ She clapped her hands, smiling brightly. ‘And he did it with the word got – how do you like that?’ The Betsy plan was working very well.
Stuart watched her efforts, wearing his most naive smile with just a little worry line between the eyes. He had agreed to this strategy but now he was afraid she might be overdoing it a little. Nodding pleasantly, he said, ‘Mort’s a real alligator when it comes to those active and passive verbs, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, he is. So let’s say the victim was found on Meredith Mountain. Is that passive enough?’
‘I think so,’ Stuart said. ‘The corpse was found there, but we don’t know by what means he arrived. If he was dead on arrival, we don’t have to answer the riddle of why he went there, do we?’
‘Well … We don’t need to wonder about his motivation. But we’d sure like to know why somebody else put him there.’
‘Why would anybody move a corpse?’ Stuart said. ‘How many anybodys would it take?’
‘And if they cared enough about a body to move it, why would they put it where the fire was going?’
‘And if the exploding fire blew his shoe up into the tree, where’s the other shoe?’
‘And the biggest question of all,’ Alice said. ‘If the fire didn’t kill him, what did?’
‘This is all beginning to sound really crazy,’ Mort said. ‘Stuart, how confident are you that these docs have got it right? You think they’ve proved there wasn’t any smoke in the lungs?’
‘My roommate in senior year went on to med school in New York. He’s done some assisting after urban fires, so I emailed him a couple of questions. No names,’ he said, to Mort’s alarmed reaction. ‘It won’t leak – he doesn’t even know where I am. Here’s what he sent back—’ He scrabbled through his notes and came up with: ‘“Everything they say sounds credible, but if they want to prove the body was moved why don’t they check lividity?”’
Mort said, ‘What’s lividity?’
‘You know when you die your blood stops circulating?’
‘I believe I’ve heard that, yes. This is what you learn in college?’
Stuart ignored the sneer and went on patiently, ‘So when you’re dead, if your body’s left undisturbed, the blood collects in the low spots and makes kind of, like, purple bruises. If you get moved, that reaction will be confused, harder to spot and you may get partial lividity marks in different areas. Or none, if you were moved several times.
‘I asked the autopsy docs if they checked. They sent me this—’ He pulled up another note. ‘“The epidermis and dermis skin layers are both just toast. And the burns are so deep, even the subdermal tissue is scarred by fire. No lividity check is possible.” So, we’re probably never going to see proof he was moved. But he was found roasted, and did not have soot in his airways.’
‘Which is probably good enough to convince most reasonable people he was moved,’ Alice said. ‘It doesn’t help with any of the other questions and right now I don’t know what will, do you?’
‘No. I’m hoping we get a chance to talk to Jim Tasker before we have to send this to the printer.’
‘Good idea. So, for now, shall we move on to the tox screen?’
It was five pages long and covered with charts and graphs and chemical symbols. Surrounding text claimed to describe the substances present in what was left of the victim when he was found on the mountain.
‘Or to be honest,’ Stuart said, ‘two to three days later when the sheriff’s crew got him down from there and into a lab.’
‘Well, and then there was another move to Missoula.’
‘But didn’t they say they drew the fluids for these tests at the Helena morgue before they sent him to Missoula?’
‘Oh, that’s right. Can’t do anything about the time spent on the mountain before he was found, though. Don’t even know how long it was.’
‘Can’t be any longer than since the fire went out, can it?’ Stuart said.
‘No. Nor much shorter, come to think about it. It was in deep ashes that hadn’t been disturbed, they said.’
‘OK, kiddies,’ Mort said, ‘quit proving how smart you are and tell me what’s in the damn test.’
‘I knew we were never going to decipher that,’ Stuart said. ‘So I emailed the head of the chemistry department at the university. He gave me a list in plain English. It’s quite a cocktail. This person had been sampling several opioids as well as marijuana. Only one of the doses present was large enough to be lethal, though. Our man had enough Fentanyl in him to kill a horse. Several horses, actually – maybe a whole team of Clydesdales, like they have on that beer truck.’
‘So that’s what killed him?’
‘If nothing else killed him first. No question. The professor says no human being could survive such a dose.’
‘I don’t know anything about that drug,’ Mort said. ‘Never heard of it before. Is it some terrible new fad?’
‘No. It’s been used for years in hospitals to manage pain after surgery, and for terminal cancer patients. But that’s in carefully controlled doses administered by experts. It’s fifty to a hundred times more powerful than morphine.’
‘Good heavens,’ Mort said. ‘Why would anybody use anything so dangerous?
‘Because it’s very efficient and it’s got something I never thought about before – a wide therapeutic index. That means a wide margin between a dose that’s effective and one that’s toxic. But it’s so powerful it has to be administered by experts. The difference between a good dose and a deadly one can’t be detected by the naked eye.’
‘Isn’t it marvelous,’ Alice said, ‘how much you learn on this job?’
‘I’m glad you like it,’ Mort said, ‘because now the two of you have to get to work right away and write this up for the Extra.’
‘Oh, now you want us to do it? I thought you said you—’
‘You two did the research – you understand it now. Common sense says you should write the analysis the readers expect from us.’
‘But why today? We could come in early tomorrow and—’
‘The printer says on Monday he’s got to make signs and stickers for a hockey home game and a football semi-final starting Tuesday. The only time he’s got available to print our Extra is tomorrow, and he can only do it then if he gets it by eight o’clock tonight.’
‘I see,’ Alice said. ‘Anybody want more coffee?’ It gave her a chance to turn away. The new bridge club she had joined was bringing an instructor to town tonight to polish their contract bridge skills. She had signed up to attend and was looking forward to the change of pace.
Standing at the coffee console, cheeks aflame, she thought, I haven’t had my raise for twenty-four hours yet and already I’m working a twelve-hour shift on a weekend. She began composing the first sentence of a contract she was going to write and they would both sign, setting some limits on this Dickensian sweatshop.
But as she poured the water, a second thought surfaced. This game I’m playing right now is more interesting than contract bridge, and the Guardian is the only place in town to play it.
She fussed with the sugar packets a minute, to get her face neutral. No use letting Mort see her looking pleased.
Not to worry – Mort wasn’t even looking at her. He had his feet on the desk and was leaning far back in his big padded chair, grinning and talking on the phone to somebody who must be saying something delightful. When he rang off, he banged his feet onto the floor, jumped up and raised both hands in the air with thumbs up.
‘Yes-s-s!’ he yelled. ‘The credits are starting to roll in!’ He had just been asked to give the luncheon address at the Elks Lodge on Tuesday, and he was not even trying to conceal how pleased he was. ‘Good timing, too,’ he told them. ‘We’ve only got an exclusive hold on this autopsy report until Monday noon, so we’ll put our Extra out on Monday morning. That leaves me Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning to prepare my talk while you two finish the regular edition.’
Stuart said, ‘You’re sure it’s OK with the sheriff, this exclusive deal?’
‘Absolutely. He came to me asking to put this print job on a tab, because his department is busted after all the extra expenses from the fire. I said, “Have I got a deal for you.”’
‘What if the city council gets on his case about playing favorites, putting the Guardian ahead of out-of-town papers?’
‘He’s going to say, “Give me a bigger office budget and I’ll promise never to do it again.” Tasker’s been elected sheriff four times in a row. He knows his constituents aren’t going to punish him for making do in an emergency.’
So they drank another coffee and got down to it. Stuart and Alice had worked so many stories together by now that they functioned smoothly as a team. It was still a long afternoon of hard work, though, Stuart fact-checking and spell-checking ahead of her, she following him through the autopsy explanation, turning the raw data of their notes into acceptable prose. They were working on the last two pages when Mort came out of his office, planted his feet in a wide stance and said, ‘Speaking of budgets—’
‘Which we are not going to do at this time,’ Stuart said. ‘It’s five o’clock on a Saturday and we’ve already done two days’ work today. Be reasonable, Mort.’
‘I will. I am. Just let me say this out loud once, because I got an idea how to pay for this Extra we’re printing and I don’t want to let it get away.’
‘Two minutes,’ Stuart said, ‘and then I’m putting in my earbuds.’
Good, showing some spunk for once, Alice thought. For a minute, he almost looked like his father.
‘OK, just listen. You’ve pretty well filled up the ad space for Thursday’s paper, haven’t you?’
‘Just about, yeah.’
‘Then here’s how we’ll pay for the free special edition. Call the merchants who made the ten biggest ad buys for Thursday and sell them a two-fer. For fifty percent more, they can have the same ad in the Extra. I was thinking of running it ad-free, but why throw away a chance to break even?’ He winked at Stuart. ‘Tell them they’ll be putting their brand on a chunk of Montana history at a bargain price. Think you can do that?’
‘Sure,’ Stuart said. He flashed his most confident smile. ‘Why not? No sweat.’
‘Good. While you do that, I’ll work on my speech for Tuesday and Alice can finish up all that puttering crap for the regular edition – the church notices, city council meeting, social news, wedding notices – you know the drill.’ He rubbed his cheeks, pleased with himself. His eyes rested on Alice for a few seconds before he asked her, ‘Think you can make time to help me with my speech?’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll be able to think of plenty to say,’ she said, ‘but yes, when you get it ready I’ll check it over if you like.’
She had a feeling it wasn’t going to be that easy, so she tackled the church and club notices early on Monday. She resisted the temptation to trade book and movie chat with Lila at the episcopal rectory and noted the bingo winners at Saint Francis Catholic without letting Louella get started on politics. The telephone gods were on her side that day, too. People actually answered their phones and had their notes where they could find them. So she had city council and Chamber of Commerce items on her desk before lunch, as well as book and social clubs.
Usually she treated herself to a chapter of whatever book she was reading while she enjoyed her bag lunch. Today, feeling an undertone of urgency, she checked the Farm & Ranch News section for typos while she ate her roast beef sandwich. Better get as far along as I can before … She didn’t want to put into words what she thought was going to happen.
Mort had his office door closed, but she could see him through the glass sidelight, bent over his laptop. He was changing the position of his chair often and beginning to glance her way. She ate the last of her sandwich, brushed off crumbs, discarded the wrapping and stood up. Mort came out quietly and stood in front of her, looking more rumpled than usual, holding two sweaty pages, handwritten on a yellow legal pad.
He looked at her shoulder as he said, ‘Think maybe you could buff this up a little?’
‘Sure.’ She kept her eyes on the second button of his suit jacket. ‘Give me a few minutes to read it before we talk, OK?’
It was even worse than she had feared, full of lame clichés, coy self-promotion and two factual statements that were simply wrong. She read on, cringing. Honored to be with this splendid … So many old pals … Each and every one of us … Recent hair’s breadth escape … Our little weekly that could … my staff – my loyal comrades, if you will …
My God, how will I ever … But watching him suffer, something in her had shifted a little. This is hard for him, knowing he needs help and having to ask me of all people for it. She remembered Betsy’s voice saying, ‘The man is a bottomless pit of the need to be on top.’
When she was ready, instead of calling, she walked into his office and sat down in front of his desk. ‘I think I see what you want to say,’ she said.
‘You do? Good.’ Everything in his face said, I wish to hell I did.
Alice opened the folder she’d brought in and revealed three double-spaced pages of notes. She picked up the top one and said, ‘These are just suggestions, of course – you can shape them to suit yourself, but … I know you want to say you’re proud to be the one they’ve asked to express the gratitude we all feel for our escape from the fire. This near-calamity has made us all realize we like our town a lot just as it is, don’t we?’ She looked at him, sweating into his old blue suit, and added, ‘That’s probably an applause line, so you’ll want to pause there a few seconds and give it a chance to build.’
Mort wiggled with pleasure at the thought of applause.
‘And then you’ll certainly want to thank all the brave men and women firefighters who worked so hard to save us …’ she spread thanks liberally all over town, ‘… including the bankers who put up the money so the Guardian could take a turn at being a daily … That might get some more applause, come to think of it, and the bankers will love it. They hardly ever get to hear praise.’
‘Will you mark those places?’
‘Yes. Don’t let anybody see you wait for the clapping, though.’
By Tuesday morning, they had enlisted Sven to scan the archives for old pictures of other remarkable events the Guardian had covered. Alice summarized the stories that accompanied the pictures and Stuart, after checking to be sure the Elks Lodge had a projector and a screen, made a PowerPoint presentation incorporating the speech, a few of the raging-inferno pictures and the best of the old photos. So Mort got a turn as a scholarly town historian, too. He looked taller by the time he marched out to lunch with his CD.
‘I hope he can remember how to run the clicker,’ Stuart said as they watched him go. ‘You’re smiling like a fond mom, you know that?’
‘Well, it’s nice to see him happy for once, isn’t it?’
They both ate quick lunches and got back to work. Stuart was painfully selling the two-fer ads that he had said would be no sweat. ‘It’s lucky I got interested in journalism,’ he said as the afternoon wore on. ‘I’d have starved to death as a salesman.’
Alice had no time to sympathize; she had a big job of editing to do. Elmer, the new kid Mort had hired to help Sven, was making the usual trek to fame and glory at the Guardian – besides sweeping the floor and delivering orders, he now covered some sports events, including Monday night basketball. Admirably prompt, he turned in his copy first thing Tuesday morning. He was a fan who loved the game and reported it accurately, in sentences so badly spelled and punctuated as to be nearly impenetrable.
The one good thing about editing Elmer, Alice had learned, was that he truly did not care if she changed every blinking word, as long as she left the scores and the names of the plays and the players alone. He was a systems guy who thought the things he was good at – gadgets and games – were the things that mattered in the twenty-first century. He was just waiting for these book-reading troglodytes to catch up. Alice did her best to translate his mangled sentences and emoticons into prose that could be understood by their readers, and Elmer never complained.
Mort came back from lunch incandescent with happiness. He had been interrupted by applause several times and had two more speaking engagements in the near future.
He was quite willing to help with layout on the Extra they were composing – in fact, he insisted on doing so. Right now, he didn’t want to be anyplace else on earth but hard at work on his own little weekly that could.
Alice’s text was ready, so she transferred it to the layout screen and got ready to referee while the two men argued about where the ads should go. Stuart stopped stacking his orders suddenly and said, ‘Oh, shit, I made a mistake, though.’
‘What? What?’ Mort said.
‘I got going too fast, I guess. You told me ten ads but I sold one too many. We don’t have space for eleven, do we? Rats, I’ll have to cancel one.’
‘Don’t do that,’ Mort said quickly. ‘We’ll find a way to make it work.’ At the composing screen, he made little humming noises for five minutes. ‘We’ll reduce the font one size on the whole issue – it isn’t noticeable if you do it to everything. Stuart, you’ll have to find a smaller picture for the used car ad – and for the fur-lined boots on the Campion’s ladies’ wear section. Alice, delete about four hundred words from the story.’
‘Four hun— That’s almost ten percent!’
‘Eight percent, actually. Take out some adverbs – that’s what you always tell the rest of us.’
‘What adverbs? Mort, this is bare bones now.’
‘Alice, you’ve got fifty minutes to get rid of four hundred words. Eight words a minute. Better get started.’
Alice went back to her workspace, muttering, ‘Big whoop that you’re good at math. It’s not going to make any sense if I …’ She cut most of the preamble about the fire and began shrinking the report.
To her surprise, the story did still make sense. In fact, it kept getting better the more she tightened it. She wiggled on her stool and muttered, ‘Think I just taught myself a lesson.’
Mort looked up absently with raised eyebrows, but she waved one hand and said, ‘Nothing. Just thinking.’ The old slave driver has had enough free grins for one day.
The clock seemed to have picked up speed, though. When she had eliminated about three hundred and fifty words, Stuart said, ‘We’re close. What if we made the drugstore ad an oval?’
‘Let’s see.’ Mort’s cursor danced around the screen. ‘Yes, that’ll work … I can wrap this little piece of text around here and look, we saved two whole lines at the bottom …’ He cut and pasted the end of Alice’s story around Stuart’s oval and Alice said, ‘Hey, it looks like …’
‘Almost. Two words left over,’ Mort said.
Alice said, ‘Take out “subsequent” and make it “next.” Right there, see? Then cut that next sentence in two. If you take out the “and” …’
Together, they all said softly, ‘Yeah.’
‘Isn’t it marvelous,’ Stuart said, ‘the things you learn on this job?’