The Bone Seeker by M. J. McGrath

area where the phone sat, perched on a shabby plastic chair, and picked up the handset, flipping through her notebook for the number. Then, abandoning the call and marching back outside to her ATV, she keyed the engine and buzzed along the track that led out to the river and across the sedge meadows to Camp Nanook. Some things were better tackled face to face.
    The security detail at the camp kept her waiting while they called through to Colonel Klinsman, then escorted her along the boardwalks past the lines of prefab units and tents to the administrative block, where Klinsman smiled her into his office. The camp commander’s name and physique both suggested Germanic origins. He was a tall, angular man with watery-brown hair running to grey, and remote, disciplined eyes; mid- to late-fifties but fit and with no discernible paunch. She’d seen him once at the Defence Department’s offices in Ottawa anda couple of times since he’d arrived on Ellesmere Island, and had found him polite but professionally formal.
    Klinsman’s office was a perfect reflection of the man: ordered, authoritative, if a little bland. Or perhaps elusive. It was hard to tell which. She’d known men like Klinsman back in Guatemala with offices more or less like this. Men who, despite the lawless and outrageous violence of their natures, operated on a day-to-day level every bit as though they were calmly invincible rationalists. You saw them on golf courses all the time, she’d noticed, pretending to relax in their $300 shoes.
    Sonia guessed that Klinsman, like Palliser, wouldn’t care too much if the clean-up job got done or not. His primary responsibility was to direct the SOVPAT exercises up on Ellesmere. The decontamination programme was a side show funded not by the military but by the Defence Department. A man like Klinsman might even resent having to play second fiddle to the bureaucrats. She didn’t expect the colonel to take sides – he was too clever for that – but she did hope to be able to persuade him to put pressure on Derek Palliser to reopen the Glacier Ridge site for the clean-up crew.
    She took a seat and declined his offer of coffee.
    â€˜I’m sorry we’ve both got caught up in this,’ she said.
    â€˜It’s unfortunate,’ he replied carefully.
    â€˜My concern is that the case could drag on. And get pretty sticky. The local feeling is very anti-police. To be frank, they’re not particularly keen on Camp Nanook either. An in-built suspicion of southerners.’ She gave a brittle laugh. ‘I should know. Took me a decade before I got my party invite.’
    Klinsman glanced at his clock. ‘I’m not sure where you’re taking this, Ms Gutierrez.’
    A thin needle of anxiety pricked her. She couldn’t let him lose interest until she’d got what she came for.
    â€˜What I’m saying, colonel, is that the clean-up works mean a lot to these folks. It would really improve community relations to get goingon them. Take people’s minds off this terrible killing. Show them who the good guys are.’
    â€˜I see,’ Klinsman said impeccably.
    Sonia leaned in. ‘I’m not sure that Sergeant Palliser shares our priorities. He’s a small town man, has trouble seeing further than his own nose. A call from you, colonel . . .’
    â€˜Perhaps you’re right,’ Klinsman said enigmatically, checking the time again. Something inside her fell away. She’d lost his interest. Whatever she said from now on, he’d only be going through the motions. It would just be humiliating to continue. She stood and, thanking him for his time, swept out of the door.
    On the drive back to Kuujuaq she allowed herself to feel discouraged. The sun had poked through some early morning cloud, sending motes of creamy sunlight onto the huddle of decommissioned buildings at Glacier Ridge. From a distance they looked like an abandoned