It‘s Kate, Lyda. Is it possible to see his room?

Lyda nodded. It‘s still empty.

Empty didn‘t come close to describing it. It had been scoured clean of personality, not so much as a pinup of Britney Spears left on the walls.

The only thing that looked out of place was a flyer on the desk, a professionally produced glossy trifold leaflet with a circular logo on the facing page of a robed woman holding a globe. Kate opened it and bolded phrases leaped out at her: growth mania, conspicuous consumption, Silent Spring, Ban the Bomb, Group of 10. There was a membership form, with a space for the amount of the applicant‘s donation. Kate flipped back to the leaflet‘s facing page. Gaea, she said. The onshore Greenpeace, the poor man‘s Environmental Defense Fund. We‘ve been seeing these all over the Park. This Gaea group sure doesn‘t like your mine. She looked at Lyda. Was your Wayne a closet greenie? Or maybe he was undercover for the opposition.

It had been meant as a joke but Lyda snatched up the flyer, her cheeks flushing. There are always naysayers, she said, toeing the corporate line with what appeared to be genuine conviction. This kind of organization is a lot more anticorporate than Global Harvest is antienvironment. It will take two years for us to put together an environmental impact statement that is going to cost Global Harvest millions of dollars to write and millions more to implement. This Gaea is just a bunch of loud nuts who figure if they make enough noise they can get other nuts to write them checks.

Okay, Kate said. How about showing me where Wayne worked. Maybe I could meet some of the people he worked with.

They went out to the building on the end of the back row that was serving as the warehouse. It had been gutted down to a single large room, a wall-high sliding door cut in the side facing away from camp and a rough-and-ready dock with no railing and plenty of room between the twelve-by-twelves that formed its surface. Inside the door, an overturned wooden tote served as a counter, next to which hand trucks constantly appeared and disappeared as half a dozen employees filled orders brought to the dock by other employees in pickups and on forklifts and some who just walked up in filthy coveralls, hard hats, and Xtra Tuff boots.

They were all men and while it would be unfair to say that conversation ceased abruptly when Kate and Lyda appeared on the scene, all eyes were definitely upon them as they advanced up the steps to the dock and across the floor to the tote counter. Hi, P.J., Lyda said. This is Kate Shugak. Kate, this is P.J. Bourne. He was Wayne‘s supervisor.

P.J., Kate said.

Kate, P.J. said. He was middle-aged and rotund without being soft, unshaven and not very clean. His near-together eyes were as dark as his hair, button-bright and narrowed in perpetual distrust, as if he suspected everyone he saw of having contraband duct-taped under their shirts. He wore Carhartt bibs over red flannel underwear and his cheek bulged with a wad of chewing tobacco. He spit often and without inhibition and the floor around the tote was stained a dark brown. They found Wayne‘s truck abandoned near Niniltna, Lyda said. She wants to talk to the people he worked with.