A Grave Denied Part 14

He knew she was playing him, he just knew it. "What?" he said, and if it wasn't quite the growl he wanted it to be, at least it wasn't a whimper.

She raised her head and met his eyes. Mere inches and their lips would touch. His heart rate increased to a rapid, almost painful beat high up in his ears.

"I'm going to work this case," she murmured. "I'd rather it be with your permission than without it."

He closed his eyes and tried desperately to remember why he'd been angry. Something about a fire, and Kate and Johnny almost being killed, and Kate insisting on finding out who, in spite of the would-be murderer still being on the loose and for all they knew ready, willing, and able to kill again.

He started to rationalize. She was going to work the case if he let her or if he didn't. He had a full plate for the next week. He had to fly to Cordova that afternoon to take statements and file charges before a magistrate on the video/drug store case, and if the weather was as lousy as it often was in Cordova, he wouldn't be back tonight. The longer it took him to get to the Dreyer case, the less chance it had of being solved. Kate was a trained investigator. Better her poking around than Dandy Mike, who had found him even before Bobby had this morning and demanded to know when he was going to work.

Rationalization led to fantasy. If he let her work the case, maybe she'd- No. Nope. Not going there. "Okay," he said, his voice thick. "You're rehired. Just watch your back, Shugak, okay? If you let somebody hurt you, I'll hurt you more."

An involuntary smile spread across her face, warm, almost loving, and just possibly entirely without guile. It wasn't an expression he'd ever had directed at him before, and truth to tell it made him a little dizzy. "Thank you." He couldn't remember her ever thanking him for anything before, either. A day of firsts. Between the smile and the thanks he was ready to run before the roof fell in.

"Okay," he said, taking a step back. "Good." What was he saying? "I mean, better if you kept your nose out of it like I wanted you to, but fine that you're going to investigate. What are you doing first?" He paused. "What have you done already?"

"Talked to Bernie and Bobby and Auntie Vi and Bonnie Jeppsen. Between them, Bernie and Bonnie have recommended Len Dreyer's services to just about everyone in the Park. I've got a list of who he worked for. It'll take me a couple of days to talk to them all, given the distance between sites."

"Good," he said, retreating another step. Kate was entirely too calm for his peace of mind. He wasn't comfortable when she wasn't yelling at him. He'd grown accustomed to her yelling; a day without Kate yelling was a day he obviously didn't know what the Sam Hill h.e.l.l was going on.

"I want to go up to his cabin, too, look around some more."

"There's even less of it left than there is of yours," Jim said.

"I know. But I have to look."

"Yeah." He took another step back. "I've got to go. I'm heading out for Cordova."

"Will you be back this evening?"

"Sure. Well, maybe not. No. I don't think so. It's awfully late. Okay. Gotta go."

"Jim."

He stopped, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. She looked at the tree beneath which they had sat, and away. If he was not demented she was blus.h.i.+ng. Probably his imagination. "Thank you," she said again, very softly.

He took a deep breath. His heart was thumping in his chest like the tuba in the high school orchestra, loud and off the beat and out of tune and unstoppable. "Sure. Whatever. Glad to help. Anybody would have -I gotta go." He sketched a shaky wave and headed out of the clearing at not quite a run, terrified that she was going to ruin what was probably the first civil conversation they'd ever had with a blast of invective as soon as the ground steadied beneath everyone's feet and Kate realized who was being civil to whom.

He was halfway up the trail when he felt a nip at his heel. "What the h.e.l.l?" He turned and saw Mutt, her tail wagging furiously. As soon as she had his full and undivided attention, she jumped up, both paws on his chest, gave him a generous swipe of tongue, bounced back down, and trotted a few feet toward the homestead. She stopped and looked over her shoulder.

"Forget it," he told her, and kept walking.

Be d.a.m.ned if she didn't nip at his heels again. "Cut it out, Mutt!"

The third time she caught his pants leg in her teeth and gave a good strong yank. His feet flew out from beneath him, and the next thing he knew he was flat on his face.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" He spit out a mouthful of new gra.s.s and got to his feet. "Jesus," he roared, "what is it with you Shugak women!"

She bounced a couple of steps down the trail and looked over her shoulder, giving an encouraging yip, tail wagging furiously. He could have sworn she was laughing at him.

He steamed into the clearing and back up to Kate, who was standing stock still and watching his battles.h.i.+p-like approach with her mouth open.

"What-" she started to say.

That was as far as she got. He was back in range in two steps and he had his hand knotted in that raven cap of hair in three. He had a glimpse of startled eyes before he kissed her. He took his time over it, poured everything he had into it, all the longing, the frustration, the need, everything he'd felt since that day in September when he'd found her crouched over her dead lover, keening a wordless lament.

Be honest with yourself at least, Chopin, he thought, Jack dying didn't make you want her. You've wanted her since the first time you saw her. And then all thought stopped.

She didn't exactly respond but she didn't resist, either. For a long moment he thought that was all he was going to get. Then something changed; she sort of woke up and suddenly he had himself an armful of woman, whole, alive, responsive, and oh my G.o.d, demanding of a return on that response in a take-no-prisoners onslaught that was likely to knock him off his feet. He heard bolts being thrown back and locks clicking open and doors swinging wide. There might even have been trumpets, although his ears were ringing so loudly he couldn't be sure.

He raised his head. Slowly her eyes opened. They looked at each other. She was flushed again, and he had to get his breathing under control before he could speak. "Don't kid yourself, Shugak," he said, proud that his voice was steady. "Altruism had nothing to do with it."

And before she could say anything he turned and left. And this time, Mutt let him go.

Friday, May 9th Kate's cabin got burned down. We're staying at Bobby and Dinah's until some guy in Ahtna brings his trailer down to Kate's homestead. It was supposed to be here Tuesday night but it got stuck on the road somewhere, and both escort trucks got stuck, too, and some construction crew that's coming to dig out the foundation of the new trooper post in Niniltna is bringing up a backhoe this weekend and on the way in will dig them all out. I like Bobby and Dinah and I love Katya but Bobby's brother is an a.s.shole. I'll be glad to get back home.

Home. We've only been gone two days and I can't wait to get back. I'm turning into as much of a hermit as Kate. Only she says we're hobbits and gave me the book to read. Hobbits are cool, quick, nimble, when they throw at something they hit it. Mr. Koslowski could use Bilbo on the JV team. He'd be too short for varsity.

But I don't think that's what Kate meant.

She thinks that since Dinah ordered us replacement clothes on her computer and that she's still got her grandmother's alb.u.m and her dad's guitar and that ivory otter and the cash can that she's fine, but she's not. When she doesn't know anyone's looking at her, she gets this look on her face, kind of angry but cold, too. Jim fired her and then they met up at the homestead and something happened and he rehired her, so now she's going all over the Park and talking to everyone that ever spoke to Dreyer in their whole lives. Bobby says she is obsessing and Dinah says she'll come out of it. They're both worried, I can tell. And Bobby's brother sure isn't helping. He called Katya a mongrel. She better not know what that means. She better not remember him saying it. If someday she asks me, I'll tell her it's the best kind of dog there is, like Mutt, the best of all different kinds mixed into one smarter and stronger than all the rest.

I didn't know black people could be prejudiced against white people.

I asked if I could ride along while she did her interviews and Kate said I had to go to school but that wasn't why. I'm not a baby. I could find out stuff, and n.o.body pays any attention to teenage boys unless they think we're drinking or doping or s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around or stealing a car. I bet people would talk to me who wouldn't talk to Kate. Like Jim said, I picked up some stuff from Dad, I can handle myself.

I snuck a peek at her notebook and she's got a timeline drawn up of all the places Dreyer worked. One of the places was Van's uncle and aunt's. I asked her about him but she says she doesn't hardly remember him.

The Canathan geese have been flying in. I looked them up in the ADF&G wildlife notebook on Dinah's computer and there are six different species, including one called the cackling Canada geese which I really love the name of and I wished it nested here but the notebook says not. I think ours are dusky, six to eight pounds each.

I like the sound they make, they sound like spring. When I was living with Dad on Westchester Lagoon in Anchorage they used to come sliding in on the lagoon before the ice melted. Most of them took off as soon as they refueled (like jets) but some of them stayed and built nests. When the babies were born they'd hook up with other goose families that you could see sometimes in parks and on ball fields. Most of them were all head down in the gra.s.s, but there was always one adult with its head straight up, watching out for the others, and if you get too close it makes a noise and they all start moving away.

I was thinking about geese that day last fall that Mom showed up at Bobby's. Everybody in the Park was at his house that day, and almost every one of them got in her way when she was trying to catch up to me. Most of them didn't even know me.

But they knew Kate.

Geese mate for life, Ruthe says. Only if one of a pair dies, they change partners. There are so many in Anchorage that they let Alaska Natives harvest eggs from the nest and give them to elders to eat, but they've got to be sneaky about it because if they take the eggs too early the geese will lay more.

When Kate was with my dad, my dad never brought anyone else home and I'm pretty sure he never stayed over anywhere else. There were long times when they didn't see each other, too. Most people get married, like Bobby and Dinah. I figure since Dad married Mom that he would have liked to have married Kate, too, so she must not have wanted to.

I look at Kate and I see why my dad wanted her and why Jim wants her. A couple of times I looked up from the couch in the cabin and saw her getting dressed. I tried not to look but she is so beautiful, so strong and so smart and so tough. She can do anything. There's no one like her.

I bet she'd be surprised if I found out something about Dreyer that would help find out who killed him.

10.

Dandy Mike's real name was Daniel. It was a good, solid name straight out of the Bible, like all of Billy and Annie Mike's kids' names were, but it hadn't taken, possibly because someone less likely to march into a lion's den it would be hard to find in all twenty million acres of Park land. Dandy was handsome, good-looking, and charming. He was also incurably lazy, and a confirmed rounder whose romantic exploits had livened up many an evening at the Roadhouse and provided a news-starved Park with many a tale. His only serious compet.i.tion was Jim Chopin, who seemed recently to have hung up his zipper, at least temporarily, which brought even more public scrutiny to bear on Dandy's ongoing game of musical beds, especially in winter when there was nothing to do, if you didn't want to beat up on your wife and kids, that is.

Dandy earned just enough money fis.h.i.+ng and odd-jobbing not to draw welfare, for which his mother would have laid into him big-time. She was already torqued enough at her youngest child for being caught growing a commercial crop of marijuana in his dorm room at UAF. He'd come home to serve out his sentence and had never gone back. As opposed to the three times he had. His personal best was three straight semesters without being suspended. The dean of students, a woman not without a sense of humor but whose patience Dandy had tried pretty far when he made a move on her, too, had told his parents that girls wasn't a recognized major.

He was also generous to a fault, buying drinks at the Road-house, buying beaded earrings from Bonnie Jeppson for all his girlfriends, buying wooden toys from Virgil Hagberg for the many children in his extended family, who it must be said all seemed to adore him.

He was thirty-four years old and he'd never held down a job that required filling out a W-2 form or onto a relations.h.i.+p that had lasted longer than a month. His employers found him to be reliable and reasonably skilled. "He's no ball of fire," Old Sam had been heard to say between beers, "but a slow simmer gets the job done, too, even if it does take a little longer." His ex-girlfriends, while legion inside and out of the Park never seemed to take the end of the affair to heart, were delighted to bask in the glow of his attention, even knowing that the end was near from the moment she took him to her bed. There was something so disarming about his affection for the opposite s.e.x. He just flat out loved women, all women, of any size, shape, or age. He wasn't afraid of them, either, unlike most men, and he was more than willing to demonstrate that love to the red-s.h.i.+ft limit.

He wasn't a cheater, he was a serial monogamist, remaining true to his current flame so long as she was current, which also worked well for him. "You look incredible, what have you been up to?" Bernie Koslowski heard one of Dandy's exes say to another woman on the other side of the bar. The second woman had smiled. "Dandy," she had said simply, and the first woman had actually laughed. "At least he listened," he'd heard a much-married woman and mother of five say on another occasion, "even if it was only for two weeks."

Which was why no one could understand why he wanted to go to work for trooper Jim Chopin. Jim was a devil with the ladies, no doubt, but not even his worst enemy had ever accused him of laziness. G.o.d, just look at this past week. He'd been in and out of Cordova three times, ensuring that that drug dealer wouldn't be selling no dope to no kids again anytime soon, inside video boxes or out of them. Apprehending that abusive husband hadn't been no picnic, neither, said the old farts in the Roadhouse, heads shaking over the black eye he'd brought back from Spirit Mountain, although there were still some amongst them who thought what went on between a man and his wife ought to stay private. "What," said Old Sam, "until she's dead?" and changed tables.

Along with the black eye, Jim had brought back a split lip and the husband, trussed like a calf for branding in the back of the Bell Jet Ranger, there being no level land worthy of the name anywhere near Spirit Mountain for a fixed-wing aircraft to land. Jim didn't look too upset at being whaled on, they had to admit, in fact was downright pleasant to one and all when he climbed out onto the Niniltna airstrip and hauled the husband out after him, like maybe he'd apprehended his suspect with a little extra enthusiasm that day and it had brought him some peace.

Which wasn't what he was going to get a lot of if he succeeded in his pursuit of Kate Shugak, if in fact that was what he was doing. It was a puzzle what was going on there. "Kate ain't easy," one old fart opined.

"If she was easy, everybody^ be doing her," someone else offered. There was a lot of snickering and Old Sam changed tables again.

In between, Jim was being run ragged, what with the notorious breakup blues winding down to a grand finale of wife beatings, child abuse, drunk driving, illegal hunting, theft, burglary, armed robbery, a.s.sault, rape, and now, for crissake, a murder, and if rumor were true, the attempted murder of Kate Shugak herself, resulting in the loss of her ancestral cabin. Jim would find out who did it; they had perfect faith in him. They just weren't sure Jim would get to the perpetrator first, and if he didn't, well, wasn't going to be much left to do except clean up the mess. "Whoever done it ought to just cut his own throat right now and be done with it," somebody said, and there was pretty much universal agreement at the sentiment. This time, Old Sam stayed where he was.

No, Jim wasn't lazy, and he didn't have a lazy man's job. It was a mystery why Dandy Mike would want to work for him, when it would surely to G.o.d have him out of bed far oftener than he would like.

In truth, Dandy Mike was in the unenviable position of being spoiled rotten from birth. Annie loved children, and the only reason she had stopped having them was that her obstetrician had spoken to her husband to such purpose that Billy had gotten a vasectomy the following day. It was the one time Annie had come anywhere near leaving him, and it didn't matter that the doctor had told Billy that her chances of carrying another child to full term were slim to none and the odds were in favor of it killing them both. "He said that last time and it was my easiest delivery ever!" she flashed. It a took a year of living on tiptoe for Billy to be forgiven, and another eighteen years, after the last child was grown and out of the house, for the full price to come due, which was the adoption of a baby from Korea, the product of a Korean mother and an American soldier, unwanted by either parent. Well, h.e.l.l, Billy liked kids, too, and the house didn't feel right not smelling of dirty diapers and baby formula, and the little girl, whom Annie had named Mary for her mother, was the cutest thing he'd ever seen.

Between a new daughter in the house and his duties as tribal chief and president and chief operating officer of the Niniltna Native a.s.sociation, which was negotiating some big-time contracts with a lumber company and a minerals exploration outfit for activities to take place on a.s.sociation lands, Billy Mike didn't have a lot of time for any of his older children, most of whom had gone on to college and were now living in Anchorage, where they had indoor plumbing and cable. He had still less time for Dandy, his problem child, who seemed perfectly happy to spend as much of the rest of his life horizontal as he could.

It vexed Billy, but he did his best for Dandy, putting the screws to Jim Chopin to hire his son once the new trooper post was built. Jim wasn't notorious for bowing to pressure, and it wasn't like Billy was going to make life tough for someone who was opening a full-time, fully-staffed trooper office in Niniltna, either. There were less than three hundred troopers in the entire state of Alaska, and when most villages the size of Niniltna had trouble, they had to wait days and sometimes weeks for the law to respond. Oh no, while Billy Mike wasn't averse to exerting a little paternal coercion, no way was he going to screw up the stationing of a law enforcement professional in beautiful downtown Niniltna. Especially when he hadn't even had to lobby for it; this had all been Jim's idea.

Plus the Department of Public Safety had hired the contractor through the Niniltna Native a.s.sociation, and was already sending out feelers for a cleaning staff. Plus Jim was going to need a place to stay, and so would any prisoners he apprehended in the course of his duty, and Billy was already preparing a bid to submit to the State Department of Corrections to house and feed the accused Jim brought in.

So the upshot was that Billy didn't know why Dandy wanted the job so badly, either, but in the best of all parental worlds his problem child would have realized the error of his ways, turned over a new leaf, and settled down to become a useful member of society. He might even take an interest in tribal affairs, Billy thought, allowing himself to dream.

In truth?

Dandy wanted the job because he wanted to wear a uniform.

He wanted to wear a uniform because his only compet.i.tion for the ladies' favors had been a man in uniform named Jim Chopin, he of the blue and gold, with the Mountie hat and the s.h.i.+ny gold badge, and the big black nine-millimeter strapped to his side. If Dandy had heard one indrawn breath from whatever cozy bundle he had tucked into his arm whenever Jim walked in the Roadhouse door in full regalia, he'd heard a thousand.

Plus, he'd always liked John Wayne.

Plus, how hard could it be? He envisioned a comfortable chair behind a desk, where he would mostly answer the phone and send Jim out on calls.

Plus, there was that very nice state salary, and that even nicer package of state benefits, including retirement, which would add up even faster because they were so far out in the Bush. He could kick back and start drawing a paycheck for doing nothing by the time he was fifty.

Plus, who died and made Kate Shugak G.o.d? There was no rule of which Dandy was aware that just because Kate had once investigated s.e.x crimes for the district attorney in Anchorage that she automatically got whatever extra job came with the new trooper post in Niniltna.

So it was with an impure and righteous sense of purpose that Dandy Mike was doing more or less the same thing that Kate Shugak was, albeit with little finesse and still less ability. His progress took him from ex to ex, interviewing girlfriends past and distant past, asking them if Len Dreyer had dropped by to fix anything lately. The amazing thing was, he wound up with a list that wasn't dissimilar to Kate's, though neither of them knew it at the time.

Len Dreyer had logged almost as many miles in pursuit of jobs as Dandy had of women.

He also wasn't quite the monk Kate had been led to believe. Really all that meant was that Dreyer had had nowhere near the action Dandy had, but that he had gotten laid occasionally. "It was kind of weird," Betsy Kvasnikof said. "He was kind of there, you know? And I was hurting from Dad going off right after I graduated, you know? Mom was mooning around like a lost soul and I was taking care of Rob and Sandy full-time. I guess I was looking for a little comfort, you know?"

"Did you get it?" was Dandy's tactful reply.

Betsy looked annoyed, at either Dandy or Dreyer or both. She was a slender, dark-haired woman in her mid-twenties with big, innocent brown eyes that made her look like she was still in her mid-teens. "No," she said shortly.

Dandy, usually so smooth at getting what he wanted out of women, backed up a little, but not all the way. "Did you, er-"

"Did I sleep with him? Yes. Did I have a good time? It was okay, I guess." She smiled at Dandy with a sweetness he remembered. "Not as good as some who came after."

Dandy grinned. "Naturally not."

She laughed. "Oh, you." She looked over her shoulder. "I think I hear my husband's truck. Best you leave now."

"I heard that." He kissed her good-bye, and then he kissed her again. The back door was closing on him at the same time the front door was opening on her husband, but it wasn't anything he wasn't used to. He trod noiselessly around the house and went to his truck, parked discreetly on the shady side of a turnoff down the road.

"When are you leaving?"

Dinah winced. Bobby had no tact. Still, it was a question worth asking.

"When you agree to come with me," Jeffrey Clark said.

That is, when the answer was something you wanted to hear, Dinah thought.

"Which will be a cold day in h.e.l.l," his brother replied. Bobby's face wore the same expression it had for three days, angry and unyielding.

In that way alone were the brothers similar. Jeffrey was tall, slim, and elegant. His clothes looked freshly pressed, his hair was groomed to perfection, even his teeth, straight and white, looked tailored to fit his mouth.

Not that they'd seen much of them in the last three days, Dinah thought.

His cheekbones were high and sharp, supporting thickly lashed brown eyes. His brow was broad, his mouth firm-lipped, his jaw solid. He looked like something off the cover of GQ, GQ, and Dinah's fingers itched for her camera. She didn't dare, though. After the first shock of her overwhelming whiteness had faded, Jeffrey Clark had simply pretended that she didn't exist. She could live with that. She couldn't live with his att.i.tude toward Katya, which was one of horrified disgust. If he called her daughter a mongrel again, she would rip his tongue out of his throat. She whacked viciously at the bread dough she was kneading on the kitchen counter and tried not to listen to Part 92 of the argument that had started Tuesday upon Jeffrey's arrival and showed no signs of abating three days later. and Dinah's fingers itched for her camera. She didn't dare, though. After the first shock of her overwhelming whiteness had faded, Jeffrey Clark had simply pretended that she didn't exist. She could live with that. She couldn't live with his att.i.tude toward Katya, which was one of horrified disgust. If he called her daughter a mongrel again, she would rip his tongue out of his throat. She whacked viciously at the bread dough she was kneading on the kitchen counter and tried not to listen to Part 92 of the argument that had started Tuesday upon Jeffrey's arrival and showed no signs of abating three days later.

"I'm not going anywhere, Jeffie," Bobby said. "Least of all to Tennessee. I haven't been home since I joined the army and I'm sure as h.e.l.l not going back now."

"It's Jeffrey."

"Sure, Jeffie," Bobby said.

"Dad's dying."

"The sooner the better."

"You don't mean that."

"The h.e.l.l I don't."

"He wants to see you before he crosses over."