THE SINGLE-ENGINE BUSH PLANE STAGGERED ACROSS the sky, rocking and rolling on the air currents that rose from the jumbled land below. Nik Kane clenched his teeth and cinched his seat belt even tighter.

“Saint Joseph protect us,” he muttered. Then he smiled. Some things we learn as children never leave us, he thought.

The pilot, who looked barely old enough to shave, gave him a pitying shake of the head.

“Don’t worry, Pops,” the pilot shouted. “These river valleys are always a roller coaster.”

Kane could barely hear him over the engine’s clatter. They had been flying north and east from Anchorage for almost two hours, and the trip included all the things Kane hated about flying in Alaska.

The cabin heater blew gas fumes into the cockpit, which made Kane regret the bacon and eggs he’d had for breakfast, but didn’t raise the subarctic temperature. Kane was wearing high-tech boots, insulated coveralls, and a wool cap, and he was still cold. He had a fat Air Force- surplus fifty-below parka behind his seat, but there was no way he could put it on in the tiny cabin. Unless he shoved the pilot out of the airplane first.

The airplane banged its way through another set of air pockets, lurched sideways, then dropped like it was falling off a table, straightening out again with a jolt that set off a cacophony of shrieks and rattles. Kane’s forefinger stroked the scar that ran from the corner of his left eye to his chin. I’m accumulating quite a collection of nervous habits, he thought.

“That’s some scar,” the pilot said. “How’d you get it?”

Kane gave the pilot a look that made the younger man shrink back in his seat.

“Cut myself shaving,” he said.

“Hey, I didn’t mean nothing,” the pilot said.

“Just fly the plane,” Kane said.

He used the edge of a gloved hand to scrape at the frost on the small window in the passenger door. The washed-out winter landscape below was white, with streaks and patches of brown or gray.

Looking at so much empty space made Kane feel light-headed. I got used to small spaces inside, he thought.

To the right, he could see a flat, snowy, meandering, bluff-lined track that he took to be the Copper River. A little farther along, a smaller river angled away to the left.

“That the Jordan?” he asked, pointing.

“Yeah,” the pilot said sullenly.

The pilot slouched in his seat, one hand on the yoke, like a kid cruising a low-rider down a boulevard. He had sharp features dotted with acne scars and long, curly blond hair that needed washing. He was wearing a leather jacket over a Slayer T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. He seemed not to notice the cold.

The plane gave a series of sharp shudders. Kane cursed and gripped the sides of his seat with both hands.

“Easy, Pops,” the pilot called. “You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”

Here’s a guy who doesn’t stay down for long, Kane thought. I could strangle the little snot, but who’d fly the plane?

The bouncing continued for another ten minutes, then Kane began to see clumps of lights: a small patch on one side of the Jordan River, a small patch on the other, and farther along and higher up, a blaze of bright, industrial lighting.

That would be the Pitchfork mine, Kane thought.

Even though it was not quite noon, the winter day was dark enough to make the lights stand out sharply. Kane knew that the Glenn Highway ran through one of the groups of lights, but he couldn’t make it out in the dim light.

“Almost there,” the pilot said, sitting up and putting the small plane into a steep bank.

Three sharp gusts of wind tried to stand the airplane on its head, but the pilot got it around, around again, and lined up with an unlighted runway that had been carved out of the snow. He floated the little plane down and bounced it to a stop next to a Chevy Suburban that was idling at the side of the strip.

“Rejoice, you’re in Rejoice,” the pilot said, killing the engine.

Kane unclamped his hands from the seat, pushed open the door, and climbed unsteadily down onto the ice and snow. It seemed warmer at ground level, so he left the parka where it was.

A man got out of the Suburban. He was taller than Kane and bundled up.

“Mr. Kane?” he asked, putting out a gloved hand. “I’m Elder Thomas Wright.” His voice was soft and gentle after the engine’s racket.

“Pleased to meet you,” Kane said, shaking the gloved hand with one of his own. Their breath formed small clouds that hung in the air between them.

Wright’s eyes fastened on Kane’s scar, then slid away. Kane was used to that. Most people were afraid to say anything. But they all looked.

“We should all get in out of the cold,” Wright said. He climbed into the driver’s seat. Kane got in next to him. The heater whistled and blew hot, dry air over him. The pilot sat behind. Wright turned the Suburban around and headed for some lights about a mile away.

“You’re probably wondering why we asked you here, Mr. Kane,” Wright said.

“I am, Elder Wright,” Kane said. “But the fellow in the back is my charter pilot, not my partner. If you want to keep our business private, you might want to wait until we’re alone.”

“I will wait,” Wright said. He looked in the rearview mirror. “No offense meant to you, sir.”

“No problemo,” the pilot said. “But it’s lunchtime, so I was hoping to find something to eat. And I don’t want to let my bird sit there in the cold too long.”

“We’ll stop at our cafeteria,” Wright said. “I’ll arrange lunch for you. When you are finished, I’ll have some of our brethren take you back to the airstrip with a canvas cover and a propane heater to keep your aircraft from freezing up.”

“Sweet,” the pilot said. To Kane, he said, “We can’t take much more than an hour, or we won’t have enough light to get back to Anchorage.”

The road had been cut through a forest of scraggly black spruce and thin, ghostly white birch. Nothing grew tall or stout. It’s like God ran out of gas here, Kane thought.

Nature is not hospitable in interior Alaska. The climate is rigorous: sixty below zero in the winter and ninety above in the summer. Not many living things can adapt to that. But the real problem is not enough water. The coastal mountains block moisture. Much of the interior is little more than high desert. Damn cold at times, but desert nonetheless.

A hodgepodge of buildings stood in clearings cut along the road: new wooden structures, ATCO construction trailers, mobile homes, even a few log cabins. Overhead electrical wires ran to most of them.

The buildings stood on a bench of land that began at the river and swept away to the north, rising gently to meet the foothills of the Alaska Range.

“This is quite a layout,” Kane said.

“We’ve been here nearly forty years now,” Wright said. “Possessions accumulate.”

Wright pulled the Suburban nose-in to a big white wooden building. A long row of assorted vehicles was already parked there. The men got out of the Suburban, and Wright plugged in its engine heater. Then they walked to the building and through the staggered doors of an Arctic entryway.

They were in a well-lit hallway. In a big room to the right, about fifty people stood in a line with trays in their hands.

“Lunch is being served,” Wright said.

Conversation stilled as Wright, Kane, and the pilot walked along the line to where four young men dressed for the outdoors were standing. Wright explained what he wanted, and he and Kane left the pilot with them.

“Our business is in the office building,” Wright said. “We’ll just walk through here and out the other end. ”

The two men walked along the hallway. Opposite the cafeteria was another big room.

“That’s our community hall,” Wright said. “We hold gatherings and other community events there. We have some rooms off of it for smaller meetings.”

Every person they passed ran an eye over Kane.

“I take it you don’t get many visitors, Elder Wright,” he said.

“I’m Elder Thomas Wright,” the man said, putting a slight emphasis on his first name. “There is also an Elder Moses Wright. He is my father, and the founder of Rejoice.”

The two men went out another set of staggered doors into the cold. They crossed an open space and went into a smaller building that looked to be four ATCO trailers clipped together. Inside was a warren of offices. Wright led Kane to a big one at the far end. Eleven men sat at a large, round table that was set for a meal. All were in shirtsleeves and wore ties. Most had close-cropped hair.

“This is the Council of Elders,” Thomas Wright said, and made the introductions. “Elders” didn’t seem to be a term related to age. Theirs ranged from mid-thirties to what looked like early seventies. Each greeted Kane with the word “Welcome,” a handshake, and eyes that quickly left his face to stare over his shoulder.

Elder Moses Wright, a short, fiery-eyed old ruffian with white hair that spilled over his collar, was the only exception. No welcome from him, only a defiant stare and a handshake intended to crush knuckles. Kane held the handshake and squeezed back until the old man seemed ready to call it quits. When he got his hand back, the elder rubbed it and gave Kane a considering look, like a logger trying to figure out just where to drop a big tree.

“I’m sure you’d like a chance to wash your hands and get out of those coveralls,” Thomas Wright said. “I’ll show you to the restroom.”

When Kane got back, Thomas Wright was in shirtsleeves and a tie, too. Unwrapped, he was a tall, thick, slope-shouldered man in his mid-thirties with an oval face and sorrowful eyes.

The scene looked like pictures Kane had seen of men’s groups in the 1950s, Masons or Knights of Columbus. Only Kane, wearing wool pants and a polypropylene pullover, looked like someone from the twenty-first century.

“I guess I’m a little underdressed for the occasion,” he said as he took the empty place at the table, “but I chose warmth over formality.”

That got a chuckle from a couple of the elders.

Without a signal that Kane noticed, teenage girls brought food and withdrew. Lunch looked like stew of some sort. Kane picked up his spoon and dipped it into his bowl before he noticed that everyone else was waiting.

“It is customary for us to thank God for our food before eating,” Thomas Wright said.

Kane set his spoon down and found himself holding hands with the men on either side of him. Moses Wright said grace in a booming voice, not a short prayer but a five-minute discourse on how God’s bounty fell on even the most sinful. He seemed to be looking at Kane throughout the prayer. Kane stared back. With his wild white hair and beard, and piercing eyes, Moses Wright seemed to have stepped straight from the pages of the Old Testament.

The stew was wild game and delicious.

“Elder Pinchon’s boy got the moose last fall,” Thomas Wright explained. “He’s our best hunter and a fine shot. We grow the potatoes and carrots ourselves. The bread is homemade, and the butter was churned from the milk from our own herd.”

“Rejoice is very self-sufficient,” Moses Wright growled, “and very prideful, too, it seems. ‘Woe to the crown of pride,’ it is written in Isaiah, and we all would do well to remember that.”

Thomas Wright turned his attention to eating. Other elders hurried to fill the silence.

During the meal, they told Kane that Rejoice had about 230 residents, with another thirty or so away at the moment. The community—nobody used the word “commune”—had been founded in 1967 by Moses Wright, his wife, and a couple dozen others. Over the years, some people had died or drifted away, but more had joined. Children were born, and when they became adults, most stayed.

“You were born here?” Kane asked Thomas Wright.

“I was,” Wright said. There was a tone in his voice Kane couldn’t quite place. Not pride. More like resignation.

“Does everyone who comes here stay?” Kane asked.

The Wrights passed a look.

“This life is not for everyone,” Moses Wright said. “Those of us who live here must sacrifice in the service of God.”

The girls returned to clear away the bowls, then served dessert: blueberry pie à la mode.

“Let me guess,” Kane said. “Blueberries from your own bushes. Homemade ice cream.”

All the elders smiled. Except Moses Wright.

“Do you mock us, Mr. Kane?” he thundered.

“Why, no, Elder Moses Wright,” Kane said. “You have much to be proud of.”

“This is not our doing, but God’s,” the old man said, intoning:

 
“That’s not exactly the description I’d give of this place,” Kane said, “but the rest of it seems to fit: ‘A land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.’ ”

Silence greeted Kane’s words.

“Are you a religious man, then, Mr. Kane?” asked the elder called Pinchon. He was, like Thomas Wright, in his thirties, but the resemblance ended there. Pinchon was one of the few men Kane had ever met who could fairly be called beautiful. He had fine, even features, dark hair and eyes, and eyelashes a supermodel would kill for. He had been introduced as the community’s bookkeeper.

“I’ve had a lot of time to read in the past few years,” Kane said.

“ ‘The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,’ ” Moses Wright said.

“Shakespeare, too, I expect,” Kane said, straining to keep his voice light.

The old man scowled. The other elders fought with varying degrees of success not to smile. The girls came in and cleared away the rest of the plates.

“Now, I suppose we had better get to the business that brings you here,” Thomas Wright said briskly. His tone made it clear that a meeting had begun and he was in charge of it. “Perhaps, Mr. Kane, you wouldn’t mind telling us a little of your qualifications.”

Kane looked around the table.

“My name is Nik Kane,” he said. “Except for some time in college and the Army, I’ve lived in Alaska my whole life. I am fifty-five and have been married for twenty-four years. We have three children, the last of them still in college. I put in twenty-five years on the Anchorage police force, fifteen of them as a detective. I’m here with the recommendation of the chief there, Tom Jeffords.”

Moses Wright opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it with the something unsaid.

“Why did you leave the force?” a thin, gray-haired elder asked.

“Surely you know that,” Kane said, looking around the table, meeting the eyes of each man in turn. “The story was in all the newspapers.”

A silence descended, broken by Moses Wright.

“Is this really the sort of man we want to invite into our community?” he asked. “A drunkard and a murderer?”

His son opened his mouth to speak, but Kane raised a hand to stop him. “Actually, the charge was manslaughter,” Kane said, “and in the end I was exonerated. I haven’t had a drink in more than eight years.”

“Still . . .” the old man began.

“I’m not finished,” Kane said quietly. “I’m here as a favor to a friend, not to solicit either your employment or your approval. If my presence here offends you, just say the word and I’ll go back to Anchorage.”

“Your presence here offends not only me, but God,” the old man barked.

“Father!” Thomas Wright said.

Kane got to his feet.

“Thank you for a delicious lunch,” he said to Thomas Wright. “I guess I’ll be getting back now.”

“Please, Mr. Kane,” the younger man said, putting a hand on Kane’s arm, “don’t leave.”

Something in the man’s voice made Kane sink down into his chair again.

“As for you, father,” Thomas Kane said, “we have discussed this and discussed it. You know the majority of the council does not feel as you do. Stop being obstructionist.”

The old man bared his teeth at his son, then opened his mouth to speak.

“If all of your experience is in the city,” a balding, pop-eyed fellow said quickly, “do you think you can work out here?

“Detecting is detecting,” Kane said. “And I know my way around the woods.”

Silence descended. It was clear the group had at least one more question, but no one wanted to ask it. Finally, a young man said, “There’s sort of a rough element out here. You may run into them in your work.”

Kane smiled and ran a hand over his close-cropped hair.

“I have a lot of experience with the rough element,” he said, “both as a police officer and more recently. I’ll be okay.”

“How many men have you killed?” Moses Wright asked.

“Do you want me to count the war?” Kane asked.

“Is that where you got the scar?” the old man said with a vicious grin. “The war? Or is it perhaps punishment for more recent sins?”

“That’s enough, Father,” Thomas Wright said. “Mr. Kane didn’t come here to be put on trial.”

“The Lord said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ” Moses Wright growled.

Kane looked at the old man for a long moment.

“Your Lord sets a high standard,” he said. “Are you so holy that you always meet it?”

That brought silence. Thomas Wright looked around the table and got nods from everyone but his father.

“Now, perhaps, Mr. Kane, you’d like to hear what it is we’d like you to do,” he said.

“That’s why I’m here,” Kane said.

Wright cleared his throat and began.

“As my father said, not everyone is cut out for this life,” he said. “This is a community in every sense of the word. We live together and worship together and laugh together and weep together. We raise our children together. We own everything you see together.

“That togetherness is too much for some people. So is the religion that binds us. So is the lack of amenities: no movies, no television, no coffee stands. No coffee, for that matter.”

“We allow no stimulants,” the old man said.

“Coffee is expensive,” his son said, “and we can’t grow it ourselves. At any rate, we lose a few people every year. We have our own school, but there comes a time when many of our children go off to college or the military.”

“You send people to the military?” Kane asked.

“We are not pacifists, Mr. Kane,” the old man said.

“Nor are we trying to cut ourselves off completely from the larger world,” said his son. “At least not all of us are. And because we cannot raise or make everything we need, we have to have money. So we own some businesses, both along the highway in Devil’s Toe and in Anchorage and Fairbanks. Mostly tourism related. Our own people run those businesses.

“As you can see, a significant portion of our young-adult and adult population is exposed to the larger world. A few succumb to its charms.”

“We wouldn’t lose any if we kept them at home and prayed harder,” the old man said.

His son ignored him.

“I’m telling you this so that you understand that we don’t panic when someone leaves. We don’t like to lose anyone. The community is diminished by their departure. But we understand that humans have different needs and the free will to seek to fulfill them.”

“Get to the point,” the old man barked.

“Having said all that,” his son said, “we would like to hire you to find a member of our community.”

“They would like to hire you,” the old man said.

“Elder Moses Wright,” his son said mildly, “we have discussed this and thought about it and prayed about it. This is what we agreed to do.”

None of the other elders said anything, but Kane understood that they were sitting at the table, when they no doubt had plenty to do elsewhere, to demonstrate that the community agreed with Thomas Wright and not his father.

“Who would you like found?” he asked.

“My daughter,” Thomas Wright said. “Faith.”

“By your leave, Elder Thomas Wright,” Pinchon said, “the others and I have affairs to attend to. I will assert that this is the man to do the job, and in the absence of any new disagreement”—he shot a glance at Moses Wright—“we will leave it to you to explain the task to him and negotiate his payment.”

With that, the other men put on their outdoor clothing and departed, leaving Kane and the two Wrights.

“This is unwise,” the old man said. “Rejoice has always handled its own problems.”

“Father,” the younger man said, “you can be a help or a hindrance. Either way, we are decided to do this.”

Now that the other men were gone, the differences between the two remaining were even clearer. And there was something about the younger man that Kane couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something about the way he talked or sat or held his head seemed familiar.

“I have counseled against bringing in an outsider,” the old man said, “particularly this outsider. I will continue to speak against it.”

“In that case, Mr. Kane,” Thomas Wright said, “perhaps we should continue our discussion elsewhere. So that my father may return to his prayer and meditation.”

The two men put on their outdoor gear and retraced their route to the Suburban.

“There’s something I wanted to show you anyway,” Wright said. He started the Suburban, pulled away from the building, and aimed for the foothills. As he drove, he talked.

“Faith is almost eighteen. She has been gone four days now, since Friday,” he said. “We don’t know where she has gone or with whom. Some think she has chosen the world over Rejoice. Others are afraid harm has come to her.”

“What do you think?” Kane asked.

“I don’t know what to think. Since she became a teenager, Faith has become a difficult person to fathom. She does what is expected of her and seems committed to our beliefs. But last year she insisted on attending the regional high school. She said it was because they offered programs she was interested in, but I can’t help thinking she wanted time away from Rejoice.

“The truth is, I’m afraid I don’t know my daughter very well.”

“Might her mother be able to shed some light?” Kane asked.

Wright was silent for a moment.

“Her mother was called to God four years ago,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Kane said. “How about friends?”

“I don’t think Faith confided in anyone. I of course asked the young people if they knew anything about her—I’m not certain what to call it. Departure? Disappearance?—but got no information from them. I wasn’t really sure what I should have been listening for, anyway.

“I’m not much of a detective, I’m afraid. And the local trooper says Faith is just another runaway. He couldn’t be less interested. So we sent for you.”

The two men drove the rest of the distance in silence. Wright pulled up next to a big greenhouse in an even bigger clearing and shut off the engine.

“I’m not sure how much good I can do you,” Kane said as he followed Wright into the greenhouse. “Faith is nearly an adult. She’s been gone long enough for the trail to be cold. There seem to be no clues. I don’t know the area or the people. And my past . . .”

He had more to say, but the sight that greeted him in the greenhouse took his voice away. The two men stood in a vast flower garden, an explosion of color and fragrance and moisture. The flowers were sprawled in beds, and in pots that overflowed the crude tables on which they sat. After the monotony of the winter landscape, the flowers made Kane want to sing and, at the same time, stunned him into silence. He wasn’t sure how much time went by before Wright spoke again.

“My father doesn’t approve of this place,” he said. “Most of our greenhouses are for vegetables, and a few fruits that we try to coax into growing. He thinks this place impractical and, somehow, ungodly. But man does not live by bread alone, or even by the word of the Lord. The people here need beauty in their lives, and some evidence during the long winter that nature is not all hostility and bleakness. This place provides these things. I love it here. So did Faith.”

He paused and turned to face Kane. He had tears in his eyes.

“I don’t want to force Faith to come back, Mr. Kane,” he said. “I just want to stand here with her one more time.”