Free a Night Too Dark (2010) by Dana Stabenow

Dan said, “Auntie Vi sold out to the mine?”
“She didn’t sell out,” Kate said, annoyed, and forgetting for the moment that she’d thought the same thing in so many words that morning.
“They made her an offer she couldn’t refuse?”
Kate sighed. “Pretty much.”
“She headed for a condo in Maui now?”
“No, she says she’s going to run it for them.”
Dan snorted. “Yeah, that’ll happen, Vi Moonin taking anybody’s orders.”
“Ms. Haynes’s bad memory notwithstanding,” Jim said, “Mr. Gammons is, or was, in fact, an employee of the Suulutaq Mine.” He had called the mine on their sat phone from his office sat phone when Kate was down the hill gorging on mac and cheese. “He was hired last year, according to mine superintendent Vernon Truax. He and, Truax says, about four thousand other people responded to an ad that Global Harvest ran in newspapers in Alaska and on the West Coast. Gammons was one of forty-eight hired. That is, of those employees who weren’t hired from the Park.”
Global Harvest Resources Inc. was losing no opportunity to curry local favor. They’d hired fifty-two Park rats from Ahtna to Cordova to Niniltna last January, keeping most of them on at reduced pay over the remainder of the winter so as to retain their services for when the snow melted in the spring and operation commenced. Not to mention giving them a taste of regular paychecks, something quite out of the ordinary in the Park.
As Kate kept reminding them and everyone else, they could afford it. She was going to see about Global Harvest affording week-on, week-off shifts, too. Wasn’t much point in being chair of the board ofthe Niniltna Native Association if she couldn’t throw a little weight around for the common good. “What did Gammons do at the mine?”
“According to Superintendent Truax, he was a roustabout on Gold Shift.”
“What’s a roustabout?” Dan said. “I got visions of Elvis here.”
“Again, according to the good superintendent, a roustabout is someone with a strong back who is capable of doing what he’s told.” Jim shrugged. “A little bit of everything, it sounds like, loading and unloading freight, getting it from the airstrip to the correct delivery point, warehouse, administration building, mess hall, dormitories, drilling rigs. They police the site—Superintendent Truax made sure I understood that they’re very big on a clean worksite.”
“Good for them,” Dan said, “or I’ll be all over their ass.”
This was blowing smoke with a vengeance. Dan didn’t really have any say about it, since the Suulutaq discovery was located on a series of state leases on property the state of Alaska had retained when the Iqaluk Wildlife Refuge was created around them. As chief ranger of the Park Dan O’Brian was very much a federal employee. Neither Jim nor Kate commented on this logical disconnect, however. Logic wouldn’t stop Ranger Dan if he perceived Global Harvest to be shitting anywhere near his nest.
“His fellow workers say he was suicidal?”
“According to Truax, none of them noticed. I don’t think most of them knew he was missing, to tell the truth.” Jim turned to look at Kate. “Tell me something. How many employees do they really need out there right now? To do the job they’re doing at present?”
“Can’t say for sure, never having started a gold mine up from scratch myself. But, yeah, be my guess there is a lot of make-work going on. They want to keep the Park rats happy.”
“And the Niniltna Native Association, and their shareholders,” Dan said, “of which, allow me to point out one more time, you happen to be chair of the board of directors.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kate said. Eight months into the job that had been wished on her by four determined aunties, she wasn’t even going to be comfortable with the title.
“You haven’t come out for or against the mine yet,” Dan said, prodding her. “When’s that gonna happen?”
“Never, if I have my