Everything To Prove Page 2

  CHAPTER ONE

  Twenty-Eight Years Later

  IT WAS THE ARTICLE in Forbes magazine that gave Libby Wilson the sudden impetus to throw all caution to the wind and do what she’d been waiting to do for the past twelve years. She read that article and realized that she had to go back home and make things right. Not five years from now as originally planned, when her bank account would be healthy enough to finance what was certain to be an expensive undertaking. She had to go now. The truth had remained buried for far too long. She knew her mother would object, but her mother could no longer tell her that the past didn’t matter, because it did.

  Libby knew exactly how much it mattered. She’d grown up in the same village that her mother had. She’d lived in the same little government-issue house, been shipped out to the same boarding school in Anchorage to attend high school; she’d worn the same clothes, eaten the same foods and felt the same bleak desolation when one of the village kids sniffed too much gasoline and was buried beneath the permafrost. The only difference between the poverty her mother suffered and her own fate had been the color of Libby’s eyes.

  The teacher in Anchorage had commented about her eyes. Ms. DeFranco had been young and earnest and from a well-to-do family in New England that believed in helping less fortunate cultures. She had made Libby’s future her personal crusade, which was the only reason Libby ended up going to college back East, being accepted to Tufts medical school and graduating top of her class. Proof positive that sometimes a little bit of racism could work to a minority’s benefit. Her internship was in forensic pathology and her ticket to success had been a reasonably sharp intellect and a pair of the prettiest blue eyes that ever came out of an Athapaskan villager…compliments of a Russian fur trader two generations removed on her mother’s side, and a father she’d never known.

  Libby’s internship at Massachusetts General had just recently ended and two months ago she’d been offered a residency, an impressive nod to her potential from such a fine hospital. She might have accepted it and spent the next five years bolstering her bank account and carefully plotting her return to Evening Lake, but that very week Forbes magazine hit the newsstands and a copy ended up on the table in the doctors’ lounge. Idly thumbing through the pages in one of those rare quiet moments that sometimes occur in the middle of an endless shift, Libby had stumbled over that fateful article with all those glossy color pictures and a lengthy feature profiling one of Alaska’s wealthiest and most eccentric residents: the silver-haired and distinguished-looking Daniel Frey.

  Libby had taken the magazine back to her apartment and read the article again, and yet again after that, studying the pictures of the massive log lodge, the lake and the man; all the while her blood pressure nudged toward the boiling point. Daniel Frey. Even the man’s name sickened her. She should write a letter to the editors of fancy Forbes magazine about the eccentric billionaire Daniel Frey and tell them the stories her mother had told her. She’d tell them what it had been like to work for the rich white man who hated Indians. What it had been like to be treated with contempt, to be unfairly compensated for long hours worked, to be housed in crowded conditions and poorly fed. What it had been like for her mother to fall in love with Connor Libby, Frey’s godson, only to lose her beloved on her wedding day in a suspicious plane crash. A crash her mother believed Frey had rigged both to keep Connor from bringing an Athapaskan bride back to the lodge and to claim the entire Libby fortune as his own.

  She’d tell them what it had been like for her mother to go to Frey after learning she was pregnant with Connor’s child, only to be driven from the property.

  “I know how you squaws sleep around,” Frey had said. “That baby could be anyone’s.”

  Connor Libby had been mentioned only briefly in the article. Two sentences made reference to the fact that Ben Libby’s only son had been killed in a plane crash shortly after returning from Vietnam…and that Connor’s will had specified that if he died without heirs, Frey would inherit his share of the Libby fortune.

  What Libby had to prove was that Connor in fact had had an heir, and she was determined to do just that. She remembered vividly that fateful day in high school biology class when she’d first learned about DNA, and how it could be used to prove a person’s paternity. That knowledge had changed her entire life’s focus, and had even steered her medical studies toward specializing in forensic pathology.

  Libby had long been planning to return to Evening Lake, where her father’s plane had crashed, and salvage the wreckage. The only thing that had stopped her from doing it years ago was the large amount of money it would take to find and recover the plane. She’d made inquiries to salvage operators while she was in college, but none of them could be specific as to the costs because each salvage operation was unique. All they could tell her was that it would be expensive.

  As a medical student, Libby had worked part-time during the school year and full-time in the summers to help cover the cost of her books and tuition. Scholarships and student loans had covered the rest, but saving any amount of money had been impossible. As an intern, she’d struggled to make ends meet and pay off her school debts. Logically, she should have accepted the residency that had been offered to her and worked until her finances improved, but none of that would matter if she could find just one of Connor Libby’s bones and prove she was his daughter.

  The magazine article had become the catalyst, and after Libby had finished reading it for the third time, she’d made her decision. Her mother had told her over and over again, throughout years of listening to Libby rail against the injustices of poverty, that there was no way to prove anything, and it no longer mattered. But it did. It mattered twenty-eight years ago, and it mattered just as much today. And her mother was wrong. There was a way to prove not only her paternity, but what kind of racist Frey really was.

  Which was why she turned down the offer of a residency at one of the best hospitals on the Eastern seaboard and was now flying to Alaska. The flight was a long one and gave her time to think about her strategy. What she actually thought about was the fact that she didn’t have a strategy, and had no idea how to start the search for her father’s plane other than by confronting Daniel Frey in person, something she’d always wanted to do but never dared. This strategy was a poor one, given his attitude toward the native people. He’d certainly never admit to any wrongdoings, never admit that it was strange he hadn’t wanted to attend his own godson’s wedding, and equally strange he hadn’t been anywhere in the vicinity of the lodge when the plane crashed.

  Her mother had mentioned a warden, Charlie Stuck, who had been kind to her after Connor’s death. He’d taken her in his plane while he searched for her missing fiancé. They’d searched for over a week before declaring him lost and presumed dead. No plane wreckage was ever found, just the two pontoons hung up in the rapids about a half mile down the Evening River, which led searchers to believe that the plane had gone down in the deep waters somewhere near the lake’s outlet. Charlie Stuck had been in his late fifties then, but with any luck he might still be alive. He might remember something helpful, and it was a starting place.

  When her flight touched down in Anchorage it was 10:00 p.m. and still broad daylight. Libby rented a car and threw her bags in the backseat. She drove down Highway One to a right-hand fork that took her along Six Mile Creek to a place called Hope. An empty state campground, open for the season but devoid of tourists, offered her the choice of sites overlooking Turnagain Arm. She pitched her tiny tent, ate a can of cold beans sitting on the edge of the bluff then walked a short way in the violet dusk down Gull Rock Trail. She walked until the twilight thickened and jelled, then carefully retraced her way back to her tent site and climbed into her sleeping bag.

  An hour later she heard a mysterious noise and crawled out of her tent to watch the ghostly movements of a pod of Beluga whales through the dark waters of Chickaloon Bay. Sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, she listened to them breathe as
they surfaced and swam past, and she wondered why it had taken her so long to come back home.

  Two hours later she was making coffee on her tiny camp stove, drinking it in the dawn while a cow moose browsed along the water’s edge. She cleaned up the site, packed her gear back into the rental car and returned to Anchorage. Once there, she headed for the regional office of the Department of Fish and Game and had to wait outside for an hour before the first employee showed up, still blinking sleep from his eyes. He introduced himself as Elmer Brown, and appeared surprised to find her waiting on the doorstep. He ushered her into the office and listened to her story while he made a pot of coffee. Libby told him about the plane crash, omitting any mention of her relationship to the pilot or any implications of foul play. She expressed her interest in locating the plane and speaking to the warden who had been involved in the search.

  “So, you’re looking for this Charlie Stuck,” Brown concluded.

  Libby nodded. “I’m hoping he’s still alive. He was in his fifties then, based out of Fairbanks.”

  Brown reached for the phone book and placed a call to the Fairbanks office, briefly describing the circumstances and asking if they could look into their records, then hung up. “They said they’d call back. Coffee?”

  “Love a cup, thanks,” Libby said, taking the offered mug. “Assuming the plane is still in the lake, how would one go about finding it?”

  “Well, it’d be easier now than it would have been back then, but still, that’s a mighty big lake. Deep, too,” Brown said. “There’s a good salvage outfit not too far from here. They’re expensive, all those outfits are, but Alaska Salvage just about always get what they go after. They’ve hauled a lot of planes and boats out of a lot of deep water. The company is owned by a guy named Dodge. He spent eight years as a Navy special forces combat and demolition diver before starting Alaska Salvage maybe six, eight years ago. Loads of experience, but he nearly bought the farm in a freak diving accident while salvaging that commuter plane that went down in the inlet five weeks back. You probably saw that in the news.”

  Libby shook her head. “No. I didn’t.”

  Elmer seemed pleased to be able to enlighten her. “He had a new employee on board the salvage vessel, and the kid accidentally started the winch while Dodge was attaching the cable to a piece of wreckage a hundred feet below. He got tangled up in a big jagged piece of plane wreckage. His divers managed to free him and get him to the surface but he was more dead than alive when they brought him up. Spent over a month in the hospital getting put back together. Just got out. He’ll probably never dive again but he still ramrods the outfit and he’d be the one you’d want to talk to. His office isn’t far from here.”

  “If he just got out of the hospital, I doubt he’ll be at work.”

  “He’ll be at Alaska Salvage. He lives and breathes that place.” Brown wrote the name and phone number on a card, handing it to her just as the phone rang. He picked it up. “Oh?” he said after a long pause. “I see. Okay, I’ll pass that information along. Thanks, Dick.” He hung up and gave her an apologetic shrug. “Well, I’m afraid you’re out of luck when it comes to Charlie Stuck. He died last winter in the old folks’ home, but he had a son, Bob, who still lives in the Fairbanks area. Runs a garage out toward Moose Creek. Might be worth talking to him.”

  He scrawled another name on another card, then went through the phone book and wrote the phone number down. “You might also check with the warden service based out of Fairbanks. They keep pretty good files on that stuff. They probably still have Charlie Stuck’s report on that particular search. Good luck.”

  THE SUN WAS WELL UP when Libby pulled into the Alaska Salvage parking lot in Spenard. The building was a huge blue Quonset hut with a neatly lettered sign spanning the wide doors and three late-model pickup trucks blocking the entryway. The metallic sound of banging and clanging came from inside. She stepped between the trucks and into the dimness, startled to see several massive pieces of what appeared to have been a large commuter plane scattered all over the floor. Hoses snaked across the concrete, and in a separate alcove she caught the bright flash of welding light.

  A side door opened into a small office, and when the man bent over a large nautical chart spread open on the desk glanced up and spied Libby he straightened, lifting his hands from both sides of the map, which immediately snapped back into a tight scroll. He was tall, broad-shouldered and clad in a pair of well-worn coveralls that could have used a good washing. His eyes were blue, his dark hair cropped short, his jaw shadowed with stubble. He looked to be in his mid to late thirties, long on experience but short on sleep. A jagged, raised welt slanted across his forehead and disappeared into his hairline, tracked with the marks of stitches that had been recently removed. Another shorter scar crossed the bridge of his nose, his left cheekbone was seriously abraded, and one hand was wrapped in a wad of bandages that allowed only the fingertips to show. Libby could only imagine what the rest of him looked like if his face had taken that much abuse.

  “What can I do for you?” he said in a voice as rough as his appearance.

  Libby indicated the wreckage on the concrete floor behind her. “Did you salvage this plane?”

  “Most of it,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Look, lady, if you’re with the press, I have nothing to add to what’s been said, and if you’re a relative of someone who was on the plane, you’ll have to talk to the state police.”

  “I’m neither,” Libby said. “You were recommended by Elmer Brown of the Fish and Game Department. He told me Alaska Salvage always got what it went after.”

  “Almost always,” he corrected. “That plane behind you crashed in Cook Inlet just after takeoff with six souls aboard. The riptide took some of the wreckage out before we could get to it. My crew’s still looking for the missing pieces.”

  “Was anyone killed?”

  “There were no survivors.”

  Libby glanced back at the pieces of wreckage and wondered who the people had been, and what their last moments had been like. She felt a sudden chill. “Did you…?”

  “We don’t recover bodies. The state police dive team was in charge of that. We assist as necessary, of course. Their dive team isn’t nearly as good as mine.”

  “What do you do with the wreckage?”

  “The FAA likes to look it over, so we lay everything we find out for ’em in here. It’s a convenience for them and they pay us for the privilege. When they’re done with their investigation we’ll sell what we can and scrap the rest. Why? You looking for a grisly souvenir? Something with a little blood on it, maybe? If so, you’re out of luck. I already sold all that stuff off to help pay my medical bills.”

  Libby’s chin lifted in response to the hostile sarcasm in his voice. “I’m looking to hire a salvage outfit to find a plane that went down twenty-eight years ago in Evening Lake, just south of the Brooks Range.”

  Now that she’d announced her business for being there, he eyed her up and down as if trying to decide if she was worth talking to. “Evening Lake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any idea where it crashed?”

  “Not exactly. I’m hoping to find out more after I speak with some people.”

  “Evening Lake is big. I’ve fished it. Spent a couple weeks camped up there a few years ago. Must be a good three, four hundred feet deep in some places.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Libby said, wishing he wouldn’t stare at her quite so brazenly. She decided that he was both crude and rude and any sympathy she’d initially felt for his battered condition evaporated as the heat came up in her cheeks.

  “When you’re talking remote salvage operations, you’re talking big bucks.”

  “How big?” Libby asked.

  “For a salvage operation on Evening Lake…that’d take a crew of at least three people, flying in all that gear and some pretty sophisticated equipment. Just finding the plane could take some time. Once it’s found, purchasing the salvage rights and gettin
g the wreckage to the surface could run you maybe seventy-five, eighty grand. Possibly a lot more.”

  “I see.” Libby was staggered by the sum. “What if the plane crashed in shallow water?”

  “If it were in shallow water, the initial search party would have spotted it.” He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “I’m assuming there was a search?”

  Libby nodded. “But they may have been looking in the wrong location, and if there was a lot of chop on the surface, wouldn’t that have made it difficult to spot anything?”

  “Maybe. But over the years a helluva lot of planes have flown in and out of there. If nobody’s reported seeing anything in all that time, I’d have to assume it’s way down there, and if you’re not sure the plane really crashed in the lake, you could be wasting a lot of time and money. Were there any eyewitnesses?”

  Libby shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. But the plane was taking off from a lodge, the only one on the lake at that time. They think it went down just after takeoff. The pontoons were found half a mile down the outlet of the lake.”

  “Must’ve crashed real close to the mouth of the river, then. The wind blows pretty strong through the pass there and would’ve pushed the pontoons clear to the opposite shore otherwise.”