Page 61 of Untamed Coast

The young man ignored him, sitting down at an empty table.

“Solea” began on Marco’s playlist. He could feel the rhythm of Joe Baxter’s code key, tapping away late into the night by the light of a kerosene lantern, warmed by a woodstove fire, and accompanied by the hum of the small generator powering his radio transmitter. Joe had lived the desperation of these miners himself, privy to every sacred secret, every shred of tragic news, every missed birth and death back home, every heartbreak.

Marco wondered if Joe could have been tempted away from his duty, shaded a word or two here or there, painted a brighter or darker picture than what was intended depending on his own mood. Joe had held a dangerous power—to define reality as he saw fit, to shift events in time or severity on either end of the communications conduit he uniquely owned.

Did these books hold the reality of what Joe had passed back and forth between miners and the outside world, or a carefully curated narrative, sculpted by Joe’s own agenda? Marco could feel something in the word choices, a commonality that he would not expect from the diversity of the miners themselves. He felt he could sense Joe’s subtle influence, hints of Joe’s voice coming through in both incoming and outgoing communications—subtle but unnerving.

Marco finished a journal and opened the next. He turned up the music volume a bit. Miles’s trumpet sang like a human voice, with the same rough edges, rich expressions, soulful sadness.

The book Marco had recovered from the eagle’s nest was absent from this archive. It would have come before the last one in sequence. He had found Radioville’s missing log.

Interestingly, the logs normally spanned a calendar quarter. The one he’d found in the nest started on the first day of January 1938, and the last entry was March 19, 1938. The final log in the archives started March 21 and went through April 20.

A brief obituary in the file said Joe Baxter had been found dead in his cabin, victim of an accidental fall. It struck Marco as ironic that a man who had survived the brutality of a world war, who had braved the harsh conditions of the Alaska wilderness, who had regularly rowed through dangerous waters in a wooden rowboat bringing messages to and from the mines, who had the wherewithal to survive and thrive alone on a tiny remote island—had perished from a common household accident.

Joe had died an accidental death around April 21 through 25, according to the historical record. But something odd must have happened earlier, around March 19, shortly before Joe’s death, that resulted in one book ending up in the eagle’s nest.

Polo shirt guy was up pacing again, walking past Marco’s table, still buried in his phone. He hadn’t checked anything out from the woman at the window.

Marco wondered if it was a museum employee on his break. He removed one of his earbuds. “How’s it going?”

The man gave a chin nod and sat back down at an adjoining table.

And what about Joe’s state of mind? The barfly in Pelican had recounted the legend that Joe was a raging alcoholic and the ground glass Marco had found on the beach at Radioville seemed to support that theory, but nothing here in the historical record showed any signs of that side of the story. Still, there was enough despair contained in these radio logs to bring just about anyone down.

The coded book was curious. What was Joe up to that would justify him keeping a book entirely written in code? Nothing in the files Marco had reviewed gave the slightest hint. He wanted a crack at that codebook himself, and he resolved to take a look at it when Radio Flyer was done with her repairs and he was back onboard.

Code meant secrets, and Marco wanted to know what secrets old Joe had been keeping. With the codebook and the gold hidden in the radio, Marco had a sense that there was still a lot more to uncover about Radioville.

Marco returned the box of Radioville documentation to the docent, then sat down at the public internet terminal. He googled “Woman Overboard Chichagof.”

He found several older articles from the Juneau Empire about the two previous missing women.

The captain of the boat Lena Frost was on said he had thought she was below deck sleeping during a late-night passage off the coast. When she didn’t come up in the morning, he went below and found her bunk empty. He reported her missing to the Coast Guard, who searched for her for several days before she was declared lost.

Daphne Cross was supposed to be at the helm of the Miss DC while her boyfriend took a nap. He came to the bridge and found the boat on autopilot, with Daphne nowhere to be found. The boat’s dinghy was partially out of its cradle, and the davit crane was connected to it. She was presumed to have fallen overboard while trying to put the dinghy back in place. The search was called off after a few days.

Neither woman’s body was ever recovered.

The next article was about the latest victim.

Anchorage Woman Still Missing as Coast Guard Calls Off Search

Sitka, AK.—A woman who went overboard while on a commercial fishing boat off of the coast of Chichagof Island is still missing Saturday after the U.S. Coast Guard ended its search. The Coast Guard’s Juneau headquarters tweeted that after more than 31 hours of searching, its “assets were standing down pending additional information.” According to officials, the woman in her 20s, later identified as Crystal Mohsen-Pyke of Anchorage, was reported missing from the vessel Admiralty Dawn at 3:30 a.m.

Marco found the woman’s Facebook page. Her profile photo showed a beautiful, energetic young woman dressed in full foul-weather gear standing next to a gill net drum on the deck of a fishing boat. She was holding an enormous king salmon and smiling like she had just conquered the world.

Crystal. Crystal Mohsen-Pyke. Where were you? Where are you?

There were numerous posts of sympathy and condolences from friends and family members. There was an announcement of a memorial service to be held the following week.

Most of the comments were sincere expressions of sympathy and support for her family, but a few aimed toward the Pyke family were harsh.

“Hard to believe this was just an accident, considering whose boat it was.”

“Poor girl. No good was ever gonna come of her becoming a Pyke.”

“Old Ezra probably didn’t want no kids from her and his loser son.”