Mysteries in Our National Parks: Buried Alive: A Mystery in Denali National Park

“…thought I’d come out here for a cup of coffee, even though it’s a bit nippy. I wanted to talk to you about the wolverines.” Two chairs scraped noisily across the wooden planks. His parents wouldn’t be able to see the moose from the porch.

“This is the strangest case I’ve ever been called on. I’m hoping this cold air will clear my head so I can think it through. There’s something about these deaths that just doesn’t add up.”

“Like what?” Steven asked.

Jack could hear his mother sigh. “First of all, I’ve read through stacks of papers, and the truth is no one really knows much about this animal. They’re still very mysterious. And it doesn’t help that they are surrounded by myths and legends. There’s one story where a wolverine supposedly broke into a cabin and ate a trapper alive.”

“Ouch!”

“Steven, you know that’s utter nonsense.”

His parents’ voices distracted Jack. He didn’t want to hear about wolverines when he had a huge moose in his camera’s viewfinder. He wished they’d keep quiet so they wouldn’t scare away this animal before Jack got some pictures. Compared with all the pictures of moose he’d seen in books, this one looked twice as big, maybe because he was so close to it.

The moose took another mouthful of twigs and munched idly, although Jack thought it might be watching him.

He’d heard that more people got hurt by moose than by grizzlies, so he didn’t want to tick this big guy off. Just keep it nice and easy, he told himself. Zooming in so close he could count its eyelashes, he began to snap photos.

Ashley huddled beneath the tree branches like a turtle in a shell, watching the animal with rapt attention. “We should get Mom and Dad so they can see this,” she whispered.

“No, don’t move. I don’t want to scare him. If he decides to charge us, we’re toast.”

The moose backed up, his enormous head whipping past branches as he turned to go. Even though he knew it wouldn’t make a great picture, Jack snapped a few of the animal’s rump.

“Maybe we should go tell Mom and Dad now,” she suggested. “They can still get a look at it, even if it’s moving away.”

“Nah, don’t bother. They’re all hung up on the wolverine stuff.” Jack didn’t feel like sharing the moose experience with his parents—or more truthfully, with his father. He wanted to develop these pictures, and if they turned out as great as he thought they might, he’d present them to his dad as proof that he could take some spectacular shots too—even if he didn’t have his dad’s experience or his expensive camera equipment.

Once again his parents’ voices penetrated his consciousness. Olivia was saying, “A wolverine would rather run away than fight anything its size or larger. If they hunt anything, it’s usually ground squirrels. But lack of information is just one problem. The whole case has got me all turned around. For one thing, I don’t like the way those bodies were found.”

“You mean because the last two were next to snowmobile tracks?”

“Exactly. It doesn’t make sense, Steven. They’re such secretive animals, so why would they even come close to the trail? And two of them this last time…two males together? The fact is wolverine males are solitary. They keep to their own territories. I just don’t get it.”

“Were they hit by the snowmobiles?”

“The report says there are absolutely no signs of impact. The last two bodies are at Kantishna. I’ll know more when I examine them, but it appears they weren’t hit. It’s just baffling.”

Jack knew about the report. After they’d arrived in Anchorage, they’d driven directly to Denali, found the house they were to stay in, then quickly unpacked before heading to the ranger station, where his mother had been given a packet with pictures of the dead animals. Now he heard a rustling as his mother handed some papers to his father.

“…deaths are compounded by another sad statistic,” she was saying. “This report says wolverine young have a very high mortality rate—up to 30 percent.”

“From humans hunting them?” Steven asked.

“No. Unrelated adults appear to be killing the kits of other wolverines. But 30 percent! That’s a huge amount to lose. Which underscores how the wolverine population can’t afford the loss of apparently healthy adults. They’ll be in serious trouble if we don’t get a handle on this.”

“Nature can be cruel,” he told her. “Although I must admit I’ve thought about eating my own young once or twice.”

“Steven!”

He just laughed. A beat later he said, “I still think nature can’t hold a candle to the viciousness of the human race. Look at Nicky’s situation.”

Olivia dropped her voice low. “Seriously, what could be more savage than that? The whole thing makes me sick.”

Jack and Ashley exchanged glances. Both of them knew they weren’t supposed to be hearing this. Every time they asked about Nicky, they were told his life was “confidential.” Yet here was a chance for them to find out something—maybe just a little. After all, they were the ones who had to put up with Nicky Milano, man of mystery.

“It’s true—those people have ice in their veins,” Steven was saying. “They have no conscience. All things considered, I think taking Nicky was for the best.”

Ashley had begun to creep forward so she could hear better, but Jack grabbed her by the arm. Any motion might alert their parents, who would be really angry if they caught the two of them eavesdropping.

“I agree, but I have to admit I’m still worried,” Olivia continued. “What about Ashley and Jack? When it’s all said and done, they are our first priority. Are you sure they’ll be safe?”

“Olivia, we’re in Denali, thousands of miles from any kind of danger,” Steven insisted. “No one could possibly find us here. Who would even think to look at a wildlife veterinarian and her photographer husband up here in the frozen north? You’re worrying over nothing.”

“But what if?…” Olivia pressed.

“We can’t live our lives for the ‘what ifs.’”

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m also worried about Nicky. He’s pleasant enough, but how much of all this does he actually understand?”

Jack felt his nerves tingle. The cold bit through the flimsy pajama flannel, numbing his legs. He was holding his breath, straining to catch every word when he heard it—the barely-there sound of footsteps in the snow, as soft as the wind rustling through trees. He turned, nearly jumping out of his skin until he realized it was Nicky wearing a knit ski hat pulled down over his face, with holes for the eyes and mouth. It made him look creepy, like he was going to rob a 7-Eleven or something.

“Naughty, naughty,” Nicky whispered, pointing to the two of them and then to Steven and Olivia.

Jack’s body froze, but his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Caught in the act by Nicky!

Nicky put his finger to his lips and motioned for them to follow him. Ashley crept forward, pulling Jack’s gloved hand; he fell in behind the two retreating figures, moving through the snow this time, not caring how cold his feet got. Had Nicky heard what his parents had been saying? How long had he been standing there spying on them?

The sun was brighter now, making latticework shadows against the glittering whiteness. Nicky kept walking, past a stand of conifers and a boulder with a surface scored like elephant skin, along a tampeddown pathway that led to the corner of the yard, over to a small wooden picnic table where he swept the snow off the wooden bench and pointed for them to sit down.

He had on all his gear—parka, boots and gloves, and that weird knit ski mask, blood-red in color, that covered his face all the way down to his neck.

“You think we can talk, you know, in private out here?” he asked softly. “We could go inside, but I’ve been taught to say what I have to say in open spaces. You OK with that?”

When Ashley nodded, Nicky said, good, because it was important that no one else hear what he had to tell them. Since he seemed to be waiting for Jack to comment, Jack asked, “How long were you standing there behind me and Ashley?”

“Long enough. I went outside early—I saw a moose. Did you catch that bull moose, Ashley? It was standing over there by the back fence, where the rail is split.”

“Yes.” Ashley nodded. “Yes, I did. But I thought it was a girl.”

“Nope. It had that bell thingy hanging down from its neck, which makes it a guy. I read it in a book.”

Jack felt his impatience rising as Nicky smiled a little, his lips visible through the lower hole of the ski mask. Was he just playing games, Jack wondered?

You’d think you’d be able to read a person’s expression as long as the eyes and mouth showed, but it didn’t work that way, Jack realized. All parts of a face had to come together to project gloom or joy, fear or scorn, interest or mockery.

“Then I saw you two, and I said to myself, ‘Nicky, something’s going on. Someone is talking.’” Before Jack had a chance to answer, Nicky waved his hand and said, “Your parents should be more careful.”

“Wait a minute. What do you mean they should be more careful?” Jack demanded. “We still didn’t learn anything about this ‘danger’ we might be in. I want to know who you are and why exactly you’re here with us.”

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

Ashley caught her breath, but Nicky just laughed. “Come on guys, that was a joke. I’m trying to lighten the mood here.”

“I don’t think you’re funny,” Jack told him.

Nicky’s voice turned suddenly grave. “Yeah. Nothing much about my life has been funny. It actually sucks. But it’s going to get better. My dad—he promised me that.” He looked out into the trees, his dark eyes staring at something Jack couldn’t see.

It was Ashley who finally broke the silence. “Can you tell us?” she asked softly. When she spoke, her breath made a tiny cloud.

Nicky shifted on the bench. “I’m not supposed to. But then again, you went and heard, so maybe I can tell you some. I’m from Philadelphia—maybe you already know that. It was just me and my dad and then about a week ago…about a week ago he had to leave, and I had to find a place to land and that’s how I ended up with you. But don’t feel sorry for me or nothin’,” he rushed on. “We’re going to get back together soon, me and my dad, and then I’ll be outta here. It’s all good.”

Jack scowled. Hadn’t his parents said there was danger? Hadn’t they talked about hiding from who-knew-what up in the frozen north? He wanted to reach out and shake Nicky, but Ashley kept talking in her calm voice, as if they were having a conversation about oatmeal. What was it like living in a big city? Crowded, Nicky answered, but with really good restaurants that served dishes with names he couldn’t pronounce and spices that made his tongue burn and streets that were lit up like noon all night long and stayed bustling until the crack of dawn. What was his favorite class? Science, because you got to dissect real frogs. After that maybe math. For ten long minutes the conversation droned on, Nicky’s dark eyes locked on Ashley’s, his mouth seeming disconnected because of the ski mask, as if it belonged to a ventriloquist’s dummy.

“…so I’m a city kid who ended up in the frozen north. Man, who’d a thought?” Nicky shook his head. “I can’t believe they would send me all the way here. But that Ms. Lopez lady was right; I do feel OK about it. Except for maybe the wolves and bears.” The whole time he’d been talking Nicky had been working on a tiny eight-inch snowman, and now he stuck two spruce needle arms on it as well as a spruce needle nose. “You like this thing?” he asked Ashley.

Jack’s annoyance deepened. If his sister wanted to chatter like nothing was wrong, that was fine, but he was sick of pretending the three of them were rambling through a regular conversation. Whatever Nicky’s secret was, Jack wanted to know and he wanted to know now. “What are you running away from?” he demanded.

The smile faded from Nicky’s face.

“You heard what my parents said—that no one would think to look at a wildlife veterinarian and all of that. So who’s looking?”

No answer.

“If you’re not going to tell us, then why’d you bring us over to this table?”

No answer.

“I mean, why all the secrets? Why don’t you just tell us and then we can go into the house and have some hot chocolate and forget about it. This is just dumb.”

Nicky held up his right hand. “No, it’s all right,” he said to Ashley when she began to argue that Nicky should be able to tell things the way he wanted to. “Jack’s right. See, that’s the part I need you guys to understand.” His voice became suddenly slow, deliberate, and in an odd way everything around them seemed to hush. Even a black-billed magpie that had been fluttering at the top of a spruce stopped its strident cawing. “There are…things…about me…you need to leave alone. Not that I don’t want to tell you, but it’s not safe for you to know.”

Snorting, Jack said, “Oh, come on, get real. You’re in Alaska. Nobody’s going to find you up here. Mom and Dad said so.”

“I’m not talking about me.” He cocked his fingers as if he were holding a gun, and pointed at the snowman. He pretended to shoot, then blew at the tip of his finger as if clearing smoke from a gun barrel. “I’m talking about you two.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack scoffed. “Somebody’s gonna come all the way up here to shoot us. Who? A terrorist?”

Nicky’s eyes narrowed, and he breathed quickly once or twice, sending vapor into the cold air. Jack could almost see the wheels turning inside his head as he thought things over. Suddenly he said, “I can’t really break my oath of secrecy, but we’ll play a guessing game. About my dad, right? I’ll give you a clue, and you have to figure it out.” His eyes were still narrowed, but now they had a glint in them.

“A game,” Jack said. “OK. Go.”

“Here’s the clue,” Nicky announced. “Charlie is alive.”

“Who’s Charlie?” Ashley asked.

“That’s the clue. You have to guess.” Nicky set the little snowman in the center of the table and pretended to shoot it, using his finger as a gun.

“Is the snowman Charlie?” Jack wanted to know.

“No. The snowman is dead. Charlie is the clue. Charlie. Is. Alive.” As Nicky bit off each word, Ashley looked toward Jack and shrugged.

Jack swept his gaze around the snowy landscape. “I got it,” he said. “Charlie is the magpie up there in the tree. It’s still alive.”

Nicky shook his head. “You guys are so dense. Charlie’s no one. Charlie is just a word. OK, I’ll give you another clue. Can icicles attack?”

“Huh?” What kind of clue was that? Jack strained his imagination to come up with some solution to the puzzle, because he couldn’t let Nicky beat him in this little brain game. He no longer cared whether it would reveal anything about Nicky’s father; it was just that he needed to win, to silence that superior tone in Nicky’s voice. Two clues, he told himself. Charlie is alive. Can icicles attack? “Well,” he muttered, “each sentence has three words.”

Ashley grew excited and added, “And the three words start with the same letters.”

“C-I-A!” Jack yelled. “Your dad’s with the CIA.”

Nicky leaped forward, slamming his hand over Jack’s mouth. “Keep it quiet,” he hissed. “Keep it quiet.”

CHAPTER THREE

Jack looked out the window of the plane and let the scenery wash thoughts of Nicky out of his mind. Beneath him was the frozen Toklat River, a winding, silver-white braid lacing through mountains that looked like sleeping dragons. Having traced the thin spider vein of the Toklat along his map, he knew it would flow out of the Alaska Range to join the Kantishna River, which would eventually flow into the Tanana River then to the mighty Yukon, which emptied into the Bering Sea. But the scene below couldn’t be translated by the ink scribbles on his map; this park was too immense, too beautiful, too vast. At six million acres, Denali National Park and Preserve covered three times the area of Yellowstone, and here there were no highways threaded with bumper-to-bumper traffic; no miles of walkway crisscrossing the forest like scattered pick-up sticks.

The wilderness beneath him was an untouched pattern of tundra and kettle ponds and spruce forests. His mother had told him that parts of this landscape had never felt the tread of a human foot, and that knowledge made Jack glad. In a way it took the edge off the uneasiness he’d been feeling about Nicky.

Ever since Nicky had pointed his finger to pretend-shoot the snowman, Jack’s distrust of him had grown. Saying that he couldn’t tell Jack and Ashley about his life or they’d be in danger—how phony it all sounded! Of course the version Nicky told did tie in a little bit with what Jack’s parents had said—that up in Alaska they were “thousands of miles away from any kind of danger.” And yet he had to be faking it. Vows of silence? That stuff about the CIA? What was that all about? Jack wished his folks would just tell the whole story straight up so he could figure out what was going on. Instead, he was forced to make sense from whatever scraps of information he could stitch together, a line here and a bit there, like tiny patches on a quilt.

Pressing his forehead against the small window, he felt the plane’s vibration run straight through his skull and into his jaw. In an odd way it felt good because something else was bothering him. He wasn’t quite sure how to put words onto it. Maybe if the throb of the engine filled his head, he wouldn’t have to think.

He watched the mountains unroll below in a rhythm of peaks and valleys, the tops of them treeless and bare, the valleys empty sugar bowls of snow. From his books he knew that the summer would bring wildflower carpets and willow thickets that hid 37 species of mammals. Concentrate on those, he commanded his brain. Instead, his mind kept flashing back to Nicky, and he realized what else was gnawing at him. It was Ashley. When they’d sat at the picnic table, her wide-set eyes had watched Nicky’s every move in a way he’d never seen before. Jack didn’t like it. He didn’t like the way her face lit up when Nicky talked about his life. He especially didn’t like the way she swallowed Nicky’s every word, gulping down his story like a baby bird. Yeah, exactly like a baby bird. In his mind he hatched a picture of her with a beak-mouth opened wide as Nicky fed her one fantasy after another.

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