Wrong Alibi

ALASKA
Midnight Sun Fishing Camp
Katchabiggie Lodge
Eight Years Ago

January.

Five and a half hours a day when the sun rose above the horizon.

Storm clouds so thick, daylight never penetrated, and night reigned eternal.

Thirty below zero Fahrenheit.

The hurricane-force wind wrapped frigid temperatures around the lodge, driving through the log cabin construction and the steel metal roof, ignoring the insulation, creeping inch by inch into the great room where twenty year old Petie huddled on a love seat, dressed in former guest’s flannel pajamas and wrapped in a Pendleton Northern Lights wool blanket. A wind like this pushed snow through the roof vents, and she knew as soon as the storm stopped, she’d be up in the frigid attic shoveling it out.

Or not. Maybe first the ceiling would fall in on top of her.

Who would know? Who would care?

The storm of the century, online news called it, before online disappeared in a blast that blew out the cable like a candle.

For a second long, dark winter, she was the only living being tending the Midnight Sun cabins and the lodge, making sure the dark, relentless Alaska winter didn’t do too much damage and in the spring the camp could open to enthusiastic fisherman, corporate team building and rugged individualists.

Alone for eight months of the year. No Christmas. No New Years. No Valentine’s Day. No any day, nothing interesting, just dark dark dark isolation and fear that she would die out here.

With online gone, she waited for the next inevitable event.

The lights went out.

On each of the four walls, a small, light-charged nightlight came on.

To battle feebly against the darkness. Outside, the storm roared. Inside, cold swallowed the heat with greedy appetite.

Petie sat and stared into a dark so black it hurt her eyes. And remembered’

There, against the far back wall of the basement, in the darkest corner, white plastic covered’something. Slowly, Petie approached, driven by a terrible fear. She stopped three feet away, leaned forward and reached out, far out, to grasp the corner of the plastic, pull it back, and see —

With a gasp, Petie leaped to her feet.

No. Just no. She couldn’t — wouldn’t — replay those memories again.

She tossed the blanket onto the floor and groped for the flashlights on the table beside her: the big metal one with a hefty weight and the smaller plastic headlamp she could strap to her forehead. She turned on the big one and shined it around the lodge, reassuring herself no one and nothing was here. No ghosts, no zombies, no cruel people making ruthless judgments about the gullible young woman she had been.

Taking both lights, she moved purposefully out of the great room, through the massive kitchen and toward the utility room.

The door between the kitchen and the utility room was insulated, the first barrier between the lodge and the bitter, rattling winds. She opened that door, took a breath of the even more chilly air, stepped into the utility room and shut herself in. There she donned socks, boots, ski pants, insulated shirt, a cold weather blanket cut with arm holes, a knit hat, and an ancient, full-length, seal-skin Aleut coat with hood. She checked the outside temperature.

Colder now—forty below and with the wind howling, the wind chill would be sixty below, seventy below’who knew? Who cared? Exposed flesh froze at twenty-eight degrees, and it froze quicker the colder it got. Frozen was frozen, so she wrapped a scarf around her face and the back of her neck. Then unwrapped it to secure the headlamp low on her forehead. Then wrapped herself up again, trying to cover as much skin as she could before she faced the punishing weather.

She pointed her big flashlight at the generator check list posted on the wall and read:

Hawley’s reasons why the generator will fail to start:
The generator is new and well-tested, so the problem is:
1. Loose battery cable
Solution: Tighten
2. Corroded battery connection
Solution: Use metal terminal battery brush to clean connections and re-attach.
3. Dead battery
Solution: Change battery in the autumn to avoid ever having to change it in the middle of a major winter storm.

If she wasn’t standing here alone in the dark in the bitter cold, she would have grinned. The owner of the fishing camp, Hawley Foggo, taught all his employees, “Hawley’s Rules.” He applied them to every occurrence of the fishing camp, and that last sounded exactly like him.

The generator used a car battery, and as instructed, in the autumn she had changed it. This was her second year dealing with the battery, it had been easier than the first time, and she felt secure about her work. So probably this failure was a loose connection or corrosion. Either way, she could fix it and save the lodge from turning into a solid ice cube that wouldn’t thaw until spring.

That was, after all, her job.

She shivered.

So much better than her last job, the one that led to her conviction for a gruesome double murder’

“Okay, Petie, let’s grab that metal battery cleaner thingie and get the job done.” Which sounded pretty easy, when she talked to herself about it, but when she pulled on the insulated ski gloves, they greatly limited her dexterity.

Out of the corner of her eye, a light blinked out.

She looked back into the lodge great room. The light-charged battery nightlights were failing, and soon she really would be alone in the absolute darkness, facing the memories of that day in the basement.

Good incentive to hurry.

She pulled on the wrist-high, insulated gloves, grabbed the wire battery connection cleaner thingie, and moved to the outer door.

There she paused and pictured the outdoor layout.

A loosely built lean-to protected the generator from the worst of the weather while allowing the exhaust to escape. That meant she wasn’t stepping out into the full force of the storm; she would be as protected as the generator itself. Which was apparently not well enough since the damned thing wasn’t working.

She gathered her fortitude, and eased the outer door open.

The wind caught it, yanked it wide, and dragged her outside and down the steps. She hung onto the door handle, flailed around on the frozen ground, and when she re-gained her footing, she used all her strength to shove the door closed again.

Then she was alone, outside, in a killer storm, in the massive, bleak wilderness that was Alaska.

Some might say Petie was stupid to put herself in this situation.

She had to agree.

Except…

No, really, she had to agree.

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