The Bone Seeker: An Edie Kiglatuk Mystery (Edie Kiglatuk Mysteries) by M. J. McGrath

Author:M. J. McGrath
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-07-24T05:00:00+00:00

22

Derek cleared away the whisky bottle, ate two packs of ramen noodles and went to bed, relieved to be on his own. He was bilious from the booze and in desperate need of sleep, but even as his head hit the pillow and the light streamed in through his closed eyelids his mind began to spiral and after a few minutes he realized it was hopeless. The incessant light didn’t help. He got up and attempted to close the gaps in the blinds but moving one rung simply opened up space further down. They needed replacing but he hadn’t got around to it. One more thing to do. He tried to focus on his latest lemming observations but as he climbed back into bed his mind resumed its restless spooling so he got up again, moved to the bathroom, turned on the cold water in the shower and got in. The cold hit him like a punch.

The truth was, he felt dumb and humiliated. Dumb because he hadn’t seen the situation coming and humiliated because he hadn’t done anything to stop it. His first thought was that Gutierrez had somehow panicked the colonel into taking action. But, as he understood it, Klinsman’s authority began and ended at Camp Nanook. The colonel had already gone out of his way to distance himself from the department. Which must mean that whoever had taken this latest decision was working above Klinsman’s pay grade.

He stepped out of the shower and began working the towel over his damp skin. Was it possible that he’d uncovered some inconvenient truth the department didn’t want made public, something that had nothing to do with Namagoose and Saxby? What if all this time he’d been looking in the wrong place?

Slinging the towel back on its hook, he padded through to the bedroom and clambered into bed. He had found himself at a crossroads with no signposts. An approach to Klinsman to put pressure on the department to give him back the case seemed unlikely to have any impact, though it was worth a try. A more complicated solution might be to throw in his lot with Sonia Gutierrez and openly challenge the department’s decision. He could even carry on with the investigation in his own time, though he’d need to keep that fact from Klinsman. Or he could just let the whole thing go.

Reaching for the pad he kept in the drawer of his nightstand, he drew three columns. At the head of one he wrote ‘Give up’, at the head of the second ‘Fight’, the third ‘Secret’. He began to write, filling first one column then another. By the time he was done, he’d convinced himself that giving up the case would only serve to destroy what little was left of his reputation in Kuujuaq. They already saw him as weak and a stooge for the south. It would look as though he’d caved in at the first sign of pressure. Which wouldn’t be so far from the truth.

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