The Great Alone

Inside, the station was brightly lit, freshly painted. Leni fought with her rolling suitcase, muscling it up over the doorsill. The only person in the place was a uniformed woman sitting at a desk. Leni moved resolutely forward, clutching MJ’s hand so tightly he squirmed and whined, tried to wrench free.

“Hello,” she said to the woman at the desk. “I’d like to speak to the police chief.”

“Why?”

“It’s about a … killing.”

“Of a human?”

Only in Alaska would that question ever be asked. “I have information on a crime.”

“Follow me.”

The uniformed woman led Leni past an empty jail cell to a closed door with a placard that read: CHIEF CURT WARD.

The woman knocked hard. Twice. At a muffled, “Come in,” she opened the door. “Chief, this young woman says she has information on a crime.”

The chief of police stood slowly. Leni remembered him from the search for Geneva Walker. His hair was trimmed into a tall crew cut. A bushy red mustache stood out against the auburn stubble that had obviously grown since he shaved this morning. He looked like a once-gung-ho high school hockey player turned small-town cop.

“Lenora Allbright,” Leni said in introduction. “My dad was Ernt Allbright. We used to live in Kaneq.”

“Holy shit. We thought you were dead. Search and Rescue went out for days looking for you and your mom. What was it, six, seven, years ago? Why didn’t you contact the police?”

Leni settled MJ in a comfortable chair and opened a book for him. Her grandfather’s advice came back to her: It’s a bad idea, Leni, but if you’re going to do it, you have to be careful, smarter than your mother ever was. Say nothing. Just give them the letter. Tell them you didn’t even know your dad was dead until your mother gave you this letter. Tell them you were running from his abuse, hiding so that he wouldn’t find you. Everything you’ve done—the changed identities, the new town, the silence—it all fits in with a family hiding from a dangerous man.

“I wanna go, Mommy,” MJ said, bouncing on the seat. “I want to see my daddy.”

“Soon, kiddo.” She kissed his forehead and then went back to the chief’s desk. Between them was a wide swath of gray metal decorated with family photographs, studded with sloppy stacks of pink while-you-were-out messages, and cluttered with fishing magazines. A fishing reel with impossibly tangled line was being used as a paperweight.

She pulled the letter out of her purse. Her hand was shaking as she handed over her mother’s confession.

Chief Ward read through the letter. Sat down. Looked up. “You know what this says?”

Leni dragged a chair over and sat down facing him. She was afraid her legs would stop supporting her. “I do.”

“So your mother shot your dad and disposed of his body and you two ran away.”

“You have the letter.”

“And where is your mother?”

“She died last week. She gave the letter to me on her deathbed and asked me to deliver it to the police. It was the first I’d heard of it. The … killing, I mean. I thought we were running from my father’s abuse. He … was violent. Sometimes. He beat her really badly one night and we ran away while he slept.”

“I’m sorry about her death.”

Chief Ward stared at Leni for a long time, his eyes narrowed. The intensity of his gaze was unsettling. She fought the urge to fidget. Finally he got up, went to a file cabinet in the back of the room, riffled through a drawer, and pulled out a folder. He dropped it on his desk, sat down, and opened it. “So. Your mother, Cora Allbright, was five-foot-six. People described her as slight, fragile, thin. And your dad was nearly six feet tall.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“But she shot your father, dragged his body out of the house, and, what—strapped him onto a snow machine—and drove up to Glass Lake in the winter and cut a hole in the ice, loaded him with iron traps, and dropped him. Alone. Where were you?”

Leni sat very still, her hands clasped in her lap. “I don’t know. I don’t know when it happened.” She felt the need to add on, layer words to solidify the lie, but Grandpa had told her to say as little as possible.

Chief Ward set his elbows on the desk and steepled his blunt-tipped fingers. “You could have mailed this letter.”

“I could have.”

“But that’s not who you are, is it, Lenora? You’re a good girl. An honest person. I have glowing reports about you in this file.” He leaned forward. “What happened on the night you ran away? What set him off?”