Breakup. Part 6

"Mr. and Mrs. Baker?" Kate said belatedly. "Are you all right?" There was no immediate answer. Alarmed, she started around the truck, where she found Mr. and Mrs. Baker and the widower seated in a row on the ground. The widower's hands were over his ears, Mr. Baker's over his eyes, Mrs. Baker's over her mouth. Kate, reprehensibly, laughed.

Mr. Baker sensed movement and uncovered his eyes. He blinked up at Kate, rose a little unsteadily to his feet and a.s.sisted his wife to hers. Kate rearranged her face into a solemn expression and waited for it. It wasn't long in coming. "Are you quite all right, Ms. Shugak?"

"Quite all right, Mr. Baker," she replied, with admirable gravity. "And yourselves?

"Oh, quite," he said. He brushed at his once impeccably creased chinos.

The seat was soaked through to where you could see what he was wearing beneath. Boxers. Only in Boston. "Who, may I ask, was that most extraordinary young woman?"

"Ah," Kate said. "That was Cindy Bingley."

"And the young man was her husband."

"Yes."

"Who appears to have committed some sort of transgression."

Kate was beginning to be amused. "Some sort."

Mrs. Baker weighed in. "She certainly seems to have a temper."

"She certainly does," Mr. Baker agreed, and if Kate was not demented, there was even something approaching a twinkle in his eye.

That was it? Evidently that was it. Kate didn't see any wounds or blood, and by this time they had acquired an interested crowd, everyone from inside the post office as well as most of the residents of the village and a few AWOL high school students, about 66 three hundred in all and all cl.u.s.tered around George's pancaked plane.

There was much shaking of heads, a great deal of sagacious commentary, which Ceorge bore with gritted teeth, and a few offers of real help, which Kate promptly accepted on his behalf. They slid the plane sideways until the wing was free of the truck, and George, outrage evident in every line of his thin, angular body, marched off to fetch the crane truck while the rest of them unloaded everything they could out of the plane.

Between the crane and a dozen willing pairs of hands, the plane was right side up again thirty minutes later. "Thanks," George said in a gruff voice. The prop was bent into an artistic curve but the wing tip wasn't and nothing else looked much hurt, although Kate knew that the bent prop alone meant a complete teardown of the engine. George was a certified A and P mechanic, but it wasn't much consolation, as he would be spending a lot of hours on the ground when he should have been in the air making money.

Everyone in the crowd was thinking the same thing, and Demetri Totemoff cleared his throat. "George, you need a plane to keep the business going. I'll trade you hours on my 172. It's got the Lycoming conversion, so you can get in and out most of the places you do with the Cub."

George's expression lightened. "When's your annual due?"

"September."

"What about you? What will you be flying in the meantime?"

"The Tripacer's at Tyson's in Anchorage. He says the annual's done and the plane's ready for pickup. You know that cantankerous b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he wants it off the lot yesterday. We could take the 172 in, I can fly the Tripacer back, and you can take the 172."

George considered. Demetri was proposing an hour of maintenance in exchange for every hour in the air, the bulk of which would not be payable for another five months, and he could work 67 on the Cub when he wasn't in the air. "Deal." He stuck out his hand.

"Thanks, Demetri."

They shook on it. Kyle Kirkus, one of the schoolteachers who had only been in the Bush since the school year began the previous September, blurted, "You're going to loan him your plane? He just wrecked his own!"

Demetri looked at Kirkus with his usual impa.s.sive stare and said flatly, "At this moment, George is the safest pilot in Alaska."

Kirkus looked around for support, found none and wandered off, shaking his head.

The Cub was rolled across the airstrip to George's hangar, the rest of the crowd following with the seats. Once inside, it became obvious that the inside of the Cub and its seats were in urgent need of immediate swabbing down, preferably with an ammonia- based, industrial-strength cleaner, but this task the helpers seemed to feel George was capable of handling on his own, and scattered for home.

Kate crossed the "Strip and discovered that the Bakers had wandered into the post office, presumably to see if the same wanted posters hung on the walls there as in the post office on Beacon Hill, although now that she thought of it, she was pretty sure the Bakers didn't do anything as plebeian as post their own mail. The widower stood next to the truck, staring vacantly off into some never-never land, surrounded by several villagers who had by some subtle osmosis become aware of the bear attack and cl.u.s.tered around in an awkward attempt at condolence.

She headed up the single road that connected the houses of the village to the riverbank. The NorthCom shack was fifty feet up from the Niniltna school, and it was just that, a shack made of plywood stapled to a two-by-four frame and covered with tar paper. Behind it stood a 112-foot steel tower surmounted by a satellite dish.

Inside, unfinished interior walls leaked pink insulation all over the plywood floor and a tiny woodstove burned red-hot. A counter 68 divided the work s.p.a.ce from the living s.p.a.ce, if you could call one room with a camp cot and no running water living s.p.a.ce. The work area was a counter with a bank of electronic gear stacked on it, surrounded by a litter of notepads and a scattering of ballpoint pens. A thin curtain of faded, fraying flowered cotton divided the two. The air was redolent of hot grease. "Mel?" Kate said. "You in here?"

A head crowned with s.h.a.ggy dishwater-blond hair poked around the curtain. "Well, hey, Kate, how you doing?" The rest of his slight frame, clad in jeans and bright red aloha s.h.i.+rt, followed, one hand holding a plate of chicken-fried caribou steaks. Kate's mouth watered. She must have looked extremely needy, because Mel grinned and held out the plate.

Melvin Haney was young, the only kind of people Northern Communications, Inc., could bribe to stay this long at remote Bush earth stations with their primitive living conditions, although working a month on and a month off eased the pain somewhat. So did the salary, which astronomical sum Mel considered barely adequate compensation for having to use a chemical toilet he had to empty himself. A graduate of East High in Anchorage, where he'd spent a thoroughly enjoyable five years majoring mostly in trouble, his father, a NorthCom executive, had given him a choice: the job in Niniltna offering the Park population communication with the outside world via satellite, or a one-way ticket Outside. Mel had been to Disneyland, and after one look at the L.A. freeways had decided that while Outside was a nice place to visit, no sane person would want to live there. To his own surprise and to his father's amazement he had proved a success at the Niniltna site, and the rest, along with a succession of girlfriends provided by Kate's extended family, was history.

Kate liked him, scrawny, cheeky little squirt that he was. "Hey, Mel,"

she said, around a mouthful of steak. "Good stuff."

"The best." A generous and kindhearted young man, he put the plate on the counter between them. "What can I do you for?"

69 "You can marry me if you can cook this good," Kate mumbled around another mouthful.

"Nah," he said, snagging his own steak before they were all gone. "I know you, you'd be the jealous type, you wouldn't let me play the field."

"True." She swallowed. "Can you raise the trooper's office in Tok?"

"Really, Kate." He licked his fingers and did his best to look hurt. "I can raise the Viking Lander on this thing if I have to."

"You've been spending way too much time with Bobby Clark," Kate said.

Mel laughed and didn't deny it. "What's going on?"

"Bear attack up to the mine."

He made a face. "Is it bad?"

"She's dead." Remembering how dead, Kate lost her appet.i.te and shoved the plate of steaks to one side.

"I'd call that bad, all right," he said soberly. "Who was it?"

"Don't know. EveVi if I did know her, I probably couldn't say now." In answer to his look, she added, "There's not much of her face left."

He shuddered, and moved to adjust a switch on a bank of electronic equipment. He punched some numbers into a keypad and gave her the handset. It rang twice before the other end picked up. "Alaska State Troopers, Tok."

Kate recognized the voice. "Elaine, this is Kate Shugak in Niniltna."

"Well, hey, Kate. Long time no see. You survive the winter okay?"

"The winter was fine. I may not make it through breakup."

"Oh, yeah? What's up?"

"Bear attack. One woman dead."

"They're up, are they?"

"They're up and grouchy," Kate said. "Can you tell Jim to rod on over here with a body bag?"

70 "Wasn't he just over there picking up another body?"

"Yes."

"Breakup," Elaine said. "Hang on." She m.u.f.fled the receiver for a moment before coming back on. "He's on his way, Kate. Don't you just love this time of year?"

"I downright adore it, Elaine. Tell Jim I've got the remains rolled in a tarp in the back of a truck parked on the Niniltna airstrip next to the post office."

"Okay. He'll be there inside the hour."

Mel accepted the handset and signed off. "Want me to call Dan O'Brian next?"

In Alaska, every accidental death required an investigation and an autopsy, and the ones involving close and fatal encounters with wildlife usually involved a fish hawk or a ranger as well. "Might as well."

She visited with Mel for a while before returning to the airstrip. In the post office she checked her mail, avoided looking at the ubiquitous piles of tax forms stacked on the counter and went back outside in time to see Dan's Super Cub lining up on final. He landed, taxied to the head of the runway and got out. "Just couldn't wait to see me again, could you, Kate?" he said cheerfully.

"It's not pretty," she warned him as he began to unroll the tarp.

"It never is," he agreed, but when the body was bared the muscles in his face s.h.i.+fted. Kate watched him in silence. She had been too preoccupied with her own problems that morning to take a good look at him, which was a shame, because the view was not bad.

Armed with a degree in forestry, Dan O'Brian had come into the Parks Service by way of the Everglades in Florida, where he discovered an aversion to snakes, and Volcanoes National Park on Hawaii, where he discovered an even greater aversion to lava.

He transferred to Alaska just in time for the d-2 lands bill, which doubled the size of the Park. He'd been chief ranger for 71 fourteen years, steering a course between the Scylla of the rights of the Natives and homesteaders and miners around whose property the Park had been created, and the Charybdis of his responsibilities as custodian of twenty million acres of public property. He succeeded so well that not once had he ever been shot at on duty, which had to be some kind of record for a federal employee in the Alaskan bush. Off duty was another matter. As much of a skirt chaser as Chopper Jim, he was less successful at it, and thus less irritating to local husbands, but they couldn't shoot at a state trooper. A park ranger made a not disgraceful second-best.

About the time Kate started comparing the blue of his eyes with the blue of Chopper Jim's, she came to her senses and pulled herself together.

She'd always had a healthy respect for the s.e.xual urge but fantasizing over a man she'd known as a friend for more than fourteen years veered dangerously close to the ridiculous. She was angry with herself, and deep down, a little afraid. Control was very important to Kdle Shugak, and over the last two days control seemed to be slipping from her grasp.

"Nope," Dan said heavily, "not pretty at all." He quietly refolded the tarp around the body. He looked up and surprised a look of fierce concentration on her face. "What?"

"Nothing."

He waited, but that was all she was going to say. "So." He nodded at the still figure in the tarp. "When did you find her?"

With a slight shock Kate realized that it was almost six o'clock. "Less than two hours ago. Her husband said they went up to take a look at the mine this morning, and the bear attacked them."

Dan frowned. "Tourists?"

"I don't know. That's him." Kate nodded at the man leaning up against the post office wall just out of earshot. The little crowd of sympathizers had dispersed once the mail started being sorted, and he was alone again, head back against the logs, hands in his pockets, eyes closed. "He hasn't said much."

72 "The bear just attacked them? Without provocation?" "I don't know,"

Kate said. "I didn't hang around to see if the bear wanted to make it two for two. And I've got Mandy's parents with me."

Dan brightened. "You've got the Original Eastern Establishment Royalty Couple with you?"

"Yes," Kate said, as the two emerged from the post office, bulging bags indicating that the gift shop that took up the right side of the post office had not gone unpatronized. "Allow me to introduce you. Mr. and Mrs. Baker, this is Dan O'Brian, chief ranger of the Park."

"h.e.l.lo," Dan said, shaking hands and looking over their matching right-off-the-L. . Bean-rack safari outfits, soaked behinds and all, with an appreciative eye. "Nice to meet you. h.e.l.l of a musher, that daughter of yours. Don't often run into that much guts and talent walking around on two legs. You must be proud."

That this was not a thought that had previously occurred to them was obvious from the startled expression on their faces. Kate reflected that both generations of the Baker family had a lot to learn.

Dan's gaze wandered past them to the widower, who had remained apart from the rest of them, face averted. "How's he holding up?"

"He's on his feet," Kate said.

Dan nodded. "Shows something. What's his name?"

"I asked. He hasn't said anything yet."

"Probably in shock, poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d." Dan walked over and held out a hand.

"Dan O'Brien, chief ranger. I'm sorry about your wife, Mr. . . . ?"

"Stewart." The man stirred and gave a long, heavy sigh. "Mark Stewart."

He shook hands with Dan, and Kate stepped forward. "Kate Shugak."

"Oh. Right. I'm sorry, I-I just couldn't talk before."

"It's all right," Kate said. "I understand."

73 "Mark Stewart," he repeated unnecessarily. "I guess I should thank you."

"No need," she said, adding, "I just wish I could have gotten there sooner." She didn't mean it, and Dan at least was fully aware that she didn't, but it was the kind of thing one said at times like these.

Stewart's grip was warm and dry and so strong it was almost painful. The man was of medium height with well-defined shoulders topping a rangy frame. He had dark eyes beneath thick dark brows, a wealth of dark hair that fell in a careless swath that must have cost $150 in some Anchorage salon, and a wide, full-lipped mouth that undoubtedly spread into a charming smile. That mouth was held rigidly now in a straight, expressionless line that matched the bleak, unfocused look in his eyes.

At least, bleak and unfocused until they looked at Kate. As their eyes met, a flash of visceral awareness leapt between them. Kate very carefully freed her hand and took what she hoped was an un.o.btrusive step back. d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n.

"I know you've just been through a horrible experience," Dan said to Stewart, "but can you give us an idea of what happened? If we've got a rogue bear on the roam in the Park, I need to know about it."

Mark Stewart looked down, long, thick lashes shadowing his cheeks. "I- You're right, it was horrible. I-" He paused, and drew in a long breath.

"Mr. Stewart," Dan said, as if he couldn't help himself, "didn't you bring a rifle with you? A pistol, even? Some kind of weapon for your own defense? Surely you must have known that this was an area known for its bear population?"

Stewart looked at the ground. "No," he whispered.

Dan met Kate's eyes and shook his head. Tourists.

"It's all so awful," Stewart muttered. "We came up here to be alone, get away from everything. This morning was so nice, we decided to walk up to the mine with a picnic lunch. And then we got 74 to the mine, and the bear came out of the woods, came right at us, and Carol-"

"You said she was on the roof," Kate said. "When you first saw us."