A Study in Sherlock полностью

The thing about Alaska is that there’s a dirt strip pretty much everywhere you look (Atlas Aviation has a good page on aviation facilities in Alaska), over three thousand of them, Jim says, and most of them unmaintained. First thing a gold miner does is hack one out of the scrub spruce so he can get in and out. Somebody’s building a cabin or a lodge, same thing. And then there’s the natural resource companies, they put in airstrips long enough to take a Herc carrying a drilling rig or a commercial gold dredge. When they’re done digging or drilling it’s not like they can roll it up and take it with them, so when the oil or gas company is gone the hunters and the fishermen and the backpackers start using it as a staging area.

That’s good news if you’re in the air and you’ve got trouble and you need to put her down. It’s not so good if you’re trying to figure out where one small plane went late one October night. There are literally hundreds of possibilities. We narrowed it down some, but not much. “If you were going to eliminate a few more of these, how would you go about it?” Kate said.

I didn’t know.

“Where’s Totemoff from?”

“Red Run,” I said.

“Where are his cousins from? The ones he met at the AFN convention?”

“Tatitlek. Oh. Oh! Plus the guys who kidnapped him needed an Eyak speaker to talk to the elder. So, Prince William Sound? But isn’t it too far for a 172?”

She smiled. I guess I did look kind of excited. But it was kind of cool, brainstorming a backtrail that way. “Maybe you’d need a bigger plane to get that far that fast, but remember Totemoff was only guessing. What about Myra?”

“Myra? Oh, you mean when the elder told him to tell Myra he said no?” Kate nodded. “You want us to look for her, too?”

She laughed. “Don’t sound so downhearted. I admit, if we were trying to find somebody from Shaktoolik, we’d have a problem. But if Myra is from Tatitlek, or Chenega, or even Whittier or Seward or Valdez, we’ve got an ace in the hole. Four of them, in fact.”

And then Bobby posted that comment on yesterday’s post, about Auntie Balasha going to Chulyin. I told Kate.

She laughed. “See?”

Comments

    Auntie Vi says, “Bobby makes me wirte this pretty cool ride-along.”

    MiketheMan says, “Dude, cool that you’re putting in all the links so I don’t have to google any for my own blog. Mrs. D. will never know.”

    RangerDan says, [Comment deleted by author.]

    RangerDan says, “What mother-effing moron gets himself kidnapped out of the Bush Company by anybody but one of the dancers?”

    RangerDan says, “Hey, when you finally get your asses back to the Park, could you and Kate stop by the NPS Anchorage office on your way to Merrill and pick up a box of the new Park maps for me? It’s been sitting there for two months while they try to figure out where Niniltna is.”

    RangerDan says, “Is the Girdwood strip gravel or paved? Lots of anonymous little cabins tucked away in the mountains there.”

    Mrs. Doogan says, “You write, When they’re done drilling it’s not like they can roll it up and take it with them … Roll up what? The drilling rig or the air strip? I know, the context makes it clear, but you need to pay more attention to your pronouns. And, Michael Abraham Moonin, Mrs. D. most certainly does know.”

Wednesday, October 26th, 12 P.M., by Johnny