Don’t Look Behind You

Kalispell?”
    “At the airport. I went over to Kalispell to see if I could find her, and, ah, then I saw her at the airport. She told me about her and another man. She told me his name was Richard. They had plans of going to Rome, Italy, and she said I should go ahead and get the divorce.”
    It was obvious that Notaro was making it up as he went along. He said he’d had no idea that Vickie was seeing another man.
    That was one version.
    “You mentioned something about being in the hospital,” Brad Brown interjected.
    Nick changed his story in a fumbling attempt to make the dates match. He now recalled that Vickie had come to the hospital to pick him up on September 21, and they had stayed at the Towne House Motel in Fairbanks.
    “We checked in about four in the afternoon. Vickie went in to take a bath, and I turned on the TV and lay down on the bed and fell asleep. Probably about eight, we went out for dinner, and got back to the hotel about ten.”
    Nick said that, once again, he’d fallen asleep. When he woke up in the wee hours of the morning, Vickie was gone and he found the note. He was scrambling to make it all fit. It was after that when she had gone to Montana, and he’d followed her there. Again, he spoke of the mysterious Richard who was going to take Vickie to Rome.
    “Did she have luggage or anything?” McCoy asked.
    “She must have,” Nick said quickly. “Because we’re missing one big suitcase and an overnight bag.”
    “You didn’t see them in the car when she picked you up at the hospital?”
    Nick shook his head.
    “How were you financially set? I mean—can she afford a ticket to Rome? Or can she afford to go ‘outside [out of Alaska]’?”
    “She couldn’t, herself, no. She probably had three or four hundred dollars that I know of. Evidently, it was Richard—”
    “Did you ever see airline tickets lying around the house?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    Nick was no longer wearing his wedding band and the troopers asked him about it.
    “I’ve been working on my car, and—ah—I took it off to clean my hands.”
    As for Vickie, Nick was sure she had been wearing her wedding ring the last time he saw her.
    McCoy tightened the screws more. He told Nick that a dead woman had been discovered in the gravel pit outside Healy; he even drew him a map. But Nick denied any knowledge of that area.
    He grew nervous, however, when McCoy said that they had made moulages of tire tracks found near the body.
    Yes, Nick said he
had
told a few people who he knew in Healy that Vickie had left him. He could not recall how many.
    “Did you report her missing to anybody?”
    “No. The reason for that is because she left the note, saying she was going to see her relatives and that she’d get in touch with me later.”
    The tape was coming to an end. McCoy asked Nick if there was anything else that he might not have told them.
    “On the night of September twenty-first, I purchased a thirty-eight Special from J.C. Penney in Fairbanks. The last time I saw her, Vickie said she had pawned it—that was when I saw her in the airport in Kalispell.”
    “Why did you purchase it—the gun?”
    “For the restaurant—not just for myself. Jerry [Hamel] said that if somebody came in with a gun and robbed you, give him the money. But this one morning, Jerry—
we
—were discussing about buying a handgun, I told him I already had one. But that Vickie had it.”
    The more he talked, the more Nick entangled himself with statements that didn’t make sense, but he hadn’t seemed to notice that yet.
    “Do you still love your wife?” McCoy asked softly.
    “Yes, I do.”
    “Have you always loved your wife?”
    “Yes, I have—ah—until, ah, this happened, I didn’t know how much I did.”
    “In other words, you wish she was back, then?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “Well,” McCoy said, “I’ll be honest. I think it’s your wife. The woman we found. Really do. I brought the gold ring here. I’ll turn the tape off, and show you the ring and watch that we brought down.”
    Nick looked at the wristwatch and ring and at the artist’s drawing of the dead woman’s face. It was difficult to read his emotions, but he seemed either saddenedor frightened. He said he thought the woman might be Vickie, but he could tell better if she had glasses on.
    “You know how to cook, don’t you?” McCoy asked.
    Wary, Nick said only “Yes.”
    “And you know how to do your job well?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t know how to