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 competition 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 fishing 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 relationship 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 sex. 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-shift 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. God, 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, assault, 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 god 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, hell, 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 Association, which was negotiating some big-time contracts with a lumber company and a minerals exploration outfit for activities to take place on Association 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 Association, 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 competition 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 shiny 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 god? There was no rule of which Dandy was aware that just because Kate had once investigated sex 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 hell,” 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, 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 attitude 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 hell not going back now.”
“It’s Jeffrey.”
“Sure, Jeffie,” Bobby said.
“Dad’s dying.”
“The sooner the better.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t.”
“He wants to see you before he crosses over.”
Bobby snorted. “I could give a shit what that bastard wants, dead or alive.”
“You have to forgive him, Bobby, the way he’s forgiven you.”
Uh-oh, Dinah thought, almost sorry for Jeffie.
Almost. She kneaded bread and wondered where Kate was. For some reason Kate was the only one among them who didn’t send Jeffrey Clark into pontifical orbit. Maybe he’d fallen into passionate, unreasoning, uncaring love with her. Maybe he’d marry her and whisk her home in lieu of his brother.
Maybe Kate would find whoever burned her cabin down and not hurt him.
Meanwhile, back at the front.
“Is he in pain?” Bobby said.
“Yes,” Jeffrey said.
“Good,” Bobby said, with a grim kind of relish.
“You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t!”
Katya, used to Daddy’s bellows, was unacquainted with the tenor of this one. Her face puckered. Bobby plucked her from the middle of her toys and cuddled her. He dropped his voice but from fifteen feet Dinah could still hear the venom in it. “Lynnie is dead because of him.”
Jeffrey’s voice sharpened. “Lynnette Adams is dead because she committed a mortal sin, and when she was called to account for it, tried to wipe it out by committing another, and then the worst one of all. She was damned from the beginning.”
Dinah froze, wrist-deep in dough. Where was the first-aid kit, exactly? Bathroom, that’s right, above the sink.
After a moment of silence that positively sizzled, Bobby spoke in a tone that was a mixture of silk and razor wire that Dinah had never heard before. “Don’t let me hear you say anything like that again, Jeffie. Not ever. Lynnie was a sweetheart, my sweetheart. We had plans, Lynnie and me. Because we got ahead of ourselves and she had an abortion doesn’t make her a sinner.”
“Dad didn’t hold the razor to her wrists in that bathtub, Robert.”
“And it wasn’t Dad calling her a whore from the pulpit, either, I suppose?”
Dinah, chilled to the bone by the menacing purr issuing forth from the man previously known as her husband, found herself holding her breath. She looked over her shoulder at the gun case standing in one corner of the room. Still locked. Good.
The silence was broken by a tiny whimper. Dinah risked a look over her shoulder and saw her daughter hugging as much of her father’s neck as she could get her arms around. “Daddy mad,” she said in a tiny voice. “Daddy mad. Don’t be mad, Daddy. Please.”
Both men, glaring at each other, were recalled to the present. “It’s okay, baby. Daddy’s not mad at you. Daddy’s never mad at you.” Bobby rocked his chair back and forth with a hand on the wheel. Her arms relaxed and her head drooped to his shoulder. Dinah noticed she didn’t let go of her father’s neck.
In a more civil tone, Jeffrey said, “Mom needs you.”
“Yeah, well, I needed her when I was sixteen and she was nowhere to be found.”
A brief pause. “She gave you life.”
“I didn’t have a vote in that, Jeffie. That was their choice. This is mine.”
“Robert-”
Dinah gave up the pretence of blissful ignorance and came around the corner, hands cupped so she wouldn’t dribble flour all over the floor. “Give it a rest, Jeffrey, why don’t you. Go on back to Auntie Vi’s. Take a drive, see something of the Park while you’re here.” And give my man a break, she thought.
He turned his head and stared at a point somewhere above her left shoulder. In three days he had yet to look her in the face. She would never forget the shock in his when Bobby had introduced them, and the repugnance in his voice. “You married a white woman?”
“All right,” he said now, still staring straight past her. “I’ll be back this evening.”
“Don’t bother,” Bobby said.
Jeffrey left without replying.
There was a whole lot of quiet going on following the muted slam of the door behind him. Everyone listened intently to the footsteps going down the steps, over the grass, the opening of the door to the battered blue Nissan truck Auntie Vi had rented to Jeffrey at a more extortionate rate than usual, the starting of the engine, the sound of it receding over the creek and down the road.
“So.” Dinah blew out a breath. “That could have gone better.”
Bobby cracked out a laugh. “You’ve said that every day since he came.”
“I’ve meant it every day since he came.”
He gave her an incredulous look. “For chrissake, woman! The man has yet to call you by name! Don’t fucking tell me you’re on his side!”
She went back to the kitchen and started kneading dough.
She heard the squeak of rubber on wood as he followed. “Dinah?”
“Jeffrey’s right about one thing.”
“Oh? And that would be what, exactly?”
Dinah took a deep breath and prepared for the storm. “He is your father. He gave you life. He wants to see you. You owe him.”
She closed her eyes and braced herself. When he said nothing, she looked around.
He was weeping.
Katya raised her head from his shoulder and stared. She touched the track of one of his tears with a pudgy little finger. “Daddy sad?” she said. Her voice broke. “Daddy sad,” she wailed, and started to sob, a horrible, heartbroken sound that struck both parents to the core.
Dinah gave her hands a quick wash, made up a bottle, and stashed Katya in her crib where, thankfully, for once Katya subsided without complaint and fell asleep with a milky face. Dinah marched back to her husband, shoved his chair into the living room, ordered him onto the couch, and curled up half in and half out of his lap. She put her arms around him and she hung on and that was all she did for about an hour, listening to the beat of his heart against her ear, feeling the intermittent shudder in his body when his breath caught. She hung on and she wouldn’t let go and she wouldn’t move. Slowly, steadily, he began to relax, one muscle group at a time. He rested his forehead against her shoulder. “I can’t go back, Dinah.”
She burrowed closer. “A day’s travel, a day there, another day to get home. Three days you’ll be gone, tops.”
“I don’t want to.”
“He’s your father.” She raised her head and searched his face. “Bobby, don’t you have one good memory of your father? Did he take you fishing, or hold you on your first bicycle, or cheer you on during a baseball game? Did he read you a story over and over again, or hold you when you were sick, or let you crawl in with him and your mother when you had a nightmare?”
He let his head fall back against the head of the couch and closed his eyes. “Maybe. One or two of those.” He opened his eyes. “Maybe all. But Lynnie’s dead because this supposedly good man called her a whore in front of her parents and her family and her friends. And me.”
Dinah chose her words carefully. “They called you a fornicator, and a sinner.”
He said nothing.
“And you didn’t kill yourself.”
His laugh was brief and bitter. “No, I let the Cong take care of that for me.”
She straddled his lap and took his face between her hands. Never before had she noticed how white they were against the black of his face, and she could and would curse his brother loud and long for that. “Bobby, what if he dies? What if he dies and you don’t say good-bye?”
“I said good-bye a long time ago, Dinah.”
“What about your mother?”
He shook his head. “I always came second to Jeffie. He was the oldest, the smartest, the most gendemanly. If she has Jeffie, she won’t want me.” He looked at her with a ghost of his old twinkle. “Jeffie got a full scholarship to MIT, did you know?”
“I think I heard him mention it twelve or fourteen times.”
They both laughed a little.
Kate walked in, followed by Johnny with a full daypack over his shoulder. “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” she said. “The evil brother strikes again.”
Bobby managed a smile. “And how was your day, dear?”
Johnny let the screen door slam behind him. “Kick him out, Bobby.”
“I did, squirt.”
“Good. Look at what we’re studying in science, Bobby. Light is both a particle and a wave, did you know that?”
Bobby was more than glad to have the subject changed. “Explain it to me, squirt.”
The men folk retired to the central console and bent over Johnny’s textbook. Bobby’s voice eventually regained full volume.
Dinah poured Kate coffee and set about trying to salvage the bread dough. “Want some fry bread?” she said over her shoulder.
Kate moaned. “Auntie Vi stuffed me full earlier today.”
“Does that mean you don’t want any more?”
“Did I say that?” Kate pulled out a large skillet and poured in oil and set it over a medium flame. She took the plateful of round patties of bread dough and fried them until both sides were a golden brown. She set the first batch on the table along with butter, powdered sugar, honey, and three kinds of jams and said, “Come and get it!” stepping back quickly so she wasn’t trampled in the rush.
She returned to the stove where the second batch was already in. “So?”
“Same old, same old.” Dinah sighed and closed her eyes briefly. “He’s only been here three days, Kate, and all I can think of is how nice it would be if our friendly neighborhood grizzly would just… kill him and serve him up for Sunday brunch to her cubs.”
“Not much meat on the man,” Kate observed.
“Not much incentive for a hungry bear,” Dinah agreed. “Damn it.”
“Want me to get rid of him?”
Dinah eyed her. “And how would you do that?”
Kate shrugged. “I’d figure it out.” She saw Dinah’s expression and choked on a piece of fry bread. “I didn’t mean I’d kill him,” she said, laughing out loud.
“What did you mean?”
“I don’t know. Sneak up on him one dark night, throw a sack over his head, and trundle him out to the airstrip, where I’d have George standing by ready to fly his ass to Anchorage and dump it on the first plane south.”
Dinah examined Kate carefully. It wasn’t braggadocio she saw on her friend’s face, it was sincerity and determination. “I believe you would.”
“Say the word.”
“You tempt me greatly,” she said, and sighed again, wistful. “But no.” She looked over her shoulder at their two men, one of whom was instructing the other in the fine art of pirating a little radio wave for the broadcast of Park Air. “There’s a lot Bobby’s been waiting to say to his family. I think he needs to.”
Kate was surprised. “You sending him home?”
“This is his home,” Dinah said firmly. “Katya and I are his home. But we are who our parents make us. His father’s dying. If he doesn’t say good-bye…” She let her voice trail off.
“Will he go?”
“He says not.” Dinah looked at her husband.
“Want me to take Katya and Johnny and clear out for a while?”
Dinah shook her head. “No, I’ve already said all I’m going to.” She gave a wan smile. “The rest is up to him.” She shook herself. “Enough of that. How the hell was your day, dear?”
Before Kate could play along, there was a knock at the screen door and they looked up to see Jim Chopin standing there.
“Hey, Jim,” Dinah said. She sounded less than friendly, which surprised Kate, because Dinah, while never having numbered among the legions of Jim’s lovers, was not immune to his manifest charms, either.
“Hey, yourself.” He looked at Kate.
Kate met his eyes without a trace of her usual discouraging scowl.
He looked confused, and then alarmed.
“Chopper Jim Chopin, long time no see,” Bobby said. “Must be all of twelve hours.”
Maybe it was the lower decibel level, maybe he didn’t want to see what was on Kate’s face, but Jim actually looked away from Kate. He frowned down at Bobby. “Who died?”
“My father,” Bobby replied. “Or the son of a bitch is about to.”
It was a toss-up who was more surprised at the words, Bobby or any of the rest of them.
“Screw it,” he said. “Let’s get drunk and go dancing.”
They commandeered the big round table in the back corner, Bobby and Dinah and Jim and Kate. Katya had been dropped off with Auntie Vi, who had taken one look at Bobby and made plans for keeping the baby overnight, overriding all obligatory, if feeble, parental objections. Johnny had made a vigorous bid to stay alone at Bobby’s-“I’m too old for a baby-sitter!”- which suggestion had been summarily squashed by Kate, and was also at Auntie Vi’s.
Bernie brought over a round, took the temperature of the table, and departed at speed with the barest minimum allowable bonhomie.
“Drink up,” Bobby said, and upended a bottle of Alaskan Amber like it was the last bottle in the last case Bernie had in stock.
Jim had left his cap, badge, and sidearm in his vehicle, which indicated that alcohol would be involved in whatever happened for the rest of the evening. He had a beer and a shot. He was out before Bobby was. Dinah was sipping at a double shot of Gran Marnier, warmed, in a snifter. Kate brooded over a sparkling water over ice, with lime.
The mood was not what you could call convivial.
As one might expect on a Friday night after breakup and before fishing season, the Roadhouse was jammed to the rafters. A gang of climbers stumbled in unshaven and smelly from a successful summit of Big Bump, and Bernie poured out Middle Fingers for all, the downing of which was accompanied by chanting and cheers from everyone else in the bar. Park rats admired insanity so long as it was sincere, and there was nothing more insane or sincere than the ambition of every mountain climber on the North American continent to summit the technically unchallenging but relatively high Angqaq Peak. Pastor Bill of the Jesus Loves You New Gospel Little Chapel in the Park and his congregation of four, down two since the wife of one had run off with the husband of another the year before, were singing hymns in the back room, although a rhythmic chinking sound accompanied by zither music indicated that they might be sharing space with the belly dancers that practiced at the Roadhouse once a month.
Jimmy Buffett was wasting away again in Margaritaville on the jukebox. “Come on, babe,” Bobby said to Dinah. “Let’s dance.” He pulled her into his lap and rolled out into the middle of the floor, where they wove a complicated little spiral of wheels and feet to a calypso beat.
“This could be our first date,” Jim said.
Kate closed her eyes and shook her head.
“A double date,” he said. “We can hang out without you getting all stressed that I’m going to jump your bones.”
Kate drank water.
“I am, of course, but that comes later. Me, too.”
“Jim,” Kate said.
“Kate,” Jim said, and grinned.
She couldn’t stop herself. She laughed.
“That’s better,” he said, and waved over another round. When Bernie had come and gone he said, “I haven’t seen you since Tuesday. I see you’re still living and uncharred, which I find to be a good thing. What have you got on Dreyer?”
“Nothing.”
He looked skeptical. “Nothing?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head and rolled the ice-filled glass back and forth across her forehead. “Jim, I was born and raised in this Park. I’ve howdied, as they say, with just about everyone who has lived or is living in it. I’m related by blood to at least a third of them, by marriage to at least another third, and the last third owes me one way or another. People talk to me because they know me and because they know I’ve been around forever.”
“You got diddly.”
“In the past three days, I’ve talked to anyone who ever said hi to Len Dreyer going into the post office, anyone who ever stood in line behind him at the Niniltna General Store, anyone who ever bumped into him in this bar. He did some kind of work for just about all of them, fixed roofs, laid floors, dug foundations, fixed boats, cars, snow machines, four-wheelers, hair dryers, irons, blenders, Skilsaws, and one 1994 Harley-Davidson two-tone blue and silver Fat Boy with twenty-four thousand miles on it that is apparently driving Archie Spring either into his second childhood or the sunset, depending on whether you talk to him or his wife.”
“An all-purpose, super-duper utility handyman.”
“With a work ethic that wouldn’t quit. His mother must have been frightened by a slacker when she was pregnant. He always showed up when he said he would, he always stayed on the job till it was done, and he always got it right the first time.”
“He could have gotten rich in a town like Anchorage.”
“Why didn’t he, then?” she said, frustrated. “And why didn’t he live higher on the hog in the Park?”
“How did he live?”
“You know his cabin burned down?” He nodded, and she pulled out a photo and shoved it at him. “Got that from the Association files, you know that survey they did of every building in the Park and its history back when the ANCSA money started coming in?”
“Sort of like a Doomsday Book for the Park,” he said, nodding.
“Yeah. Emaa wanted a starting place, an inventory for when she went looking for federal money to build housing.”
They bent their heads over the photo. It showed a tumbledown shack made of weathered boards, with a roof that looked like it was about to slide in one direction and an outhouse in the background that looked like it was going to crumble in another.
“One man’s hovel is another man’s castle,” Jim said, straightening. “What about family?”
“Did haven’t any.”
“Friends?”
“Didn’t have any.”
“Women?”
“Jim, I don’t think this guy’s been laid since he arrived in the Park.”
“And when was that?”
“Near as I can figure, before I was born.” She sat back, glum. “He may have shook hands with somebody between then and now, but that’d appear to be about the limit of Dreyer’s human contact.”
“You’d be wrong about that.”
They looked up to find Dandy standing there with an insufferably smug look on his face.
“Dandy,” Jim said.
“What are you talking about?” Kate said.
He pointedly ignored her. “I’ve been asking around.”
“You’ve been what?” Kate said. She looked at Jim, who appeared less than thrilled.
“Conducting my own investigation, and it looks like I’ve been doing better than you.” Without invitation, Dandy sat in Dinah’s chair and pulled out a small spiral notepad that looked a lot like the one Kate carried when she was on a case. He flipped it open. “Len Dreyer’s had five girlfriends. Susan Brainerd in the Park, Vicky GordaofF down in Cordova, Cheryl Wright in the Park, Betsy Kvasnikof-Dandy allowed himself a reminiscent smile -”and most recently Laurel Meganack.“
“You’re kidding me,” Jim said, startled out of his disapproval into something like respect. “Laurel Meganack? Of the cafe Laurels?”
An arm snaked around Kate, startling her. It was only Bernie, removing her empty glass and replacing it with a full one. “Thanks,” she said, squeezing the wedge of lime.
“Sure.” He lingered until Jim gave him a look. “Oh, all right,” he said, and moved on to Pastor Bill’s table, at which service showed signs of ending. Kate’s eyes followed him.
Jim noticed her thoughtful look. “What?”
“Nothing,” Kate said. “Nothing at all.” She looked at Dandy. “How sure are you about Dreyer’s girlfriends?”
Dandy looked affronted. “They wouldn’t lie to me,” he said righteously.
He might even be right about that, she thought. “How long did they last?”
“According to them he was a hit and run kind a guy,” Dandy said, smirking.
“One-night stands? Two? Be more specific.”
Dandy looked at Jim, who raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t ask,” he said, on the defensive. “None of them sounded like it was very permanent. What does it matter?”
“You have dates?”
He showed her his notes. Jim took the pad and ripped out his notes. “Hey,” Dandy said.
Kate looked at Jim. “Looking for love in all the wrong places?”
“Sounds more like scratching an itch,” he said.
She nodded. “To me, too. Dandy, did he talk to any of these women, mention family, where he was from, anything like that?”
Fingering his depleted notepad, he looked relieved. “No. I did ask that. Vicky said it was one of the reasons she wasn’t interested in it lasting. He didn’t talk much.”
She nodded. “Good work, Dandy.”
Dandy looked gratified. “Even if no one asked you to do it,” Jim said. “You’ve done enough, all right? Leave this to us now.”
Dandy’s face fell. “But I thought-”
“No,” Jim said firmly. “Dandy, you don’t have any training. We’ve got a six-month-old murder here, we can’t afford to have amateurs messing up the evidence. Not to mention which, the murderer is most likely still in the Park. He’s already demonstrated a willingness to kill not to get caught, twice. You heard what happened to Kate’s cabin. Just luck she wasn’t inside when it got torched.”
Dandy’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “I can handle myself.”
“I don’t doubt it. But you’re done. I mean it, Dandy. Thanks for what you’ve accomplished so far, I appreciate it, I really do. But you’re done now.”
Dandy opened his mouth, recognized the implacability of Jim’s expression, and closed it again. “Fine,” he said tightly, and marched off.
Jim handed her the wad of notes and Kate stuffed them into a back pocket. “Why don’t they have an ID on Dreyer yet?”
“His prints aren’t in the system.”
“Don’t they have to be if you’re in the military? Isn’t that standard procedure?”
“We don’t know that he was.”
“Bobby thinks he was.” She thought about the five women Dandy had found, and frowned into her drink. There was something about it, something about all five of the women, something she couldn’t put her finger on.
Bobby and Dinah came back to the table then, Bobby roaring up in his chair and skidding to a halt that rose him up on one wheel. Dinah squealed and he kissed her, putting those patented Clark moves on her like she wasn’t his wife.
“Jesus,” Jim muttered, “take it outside.”
Kate looked at him with such open-mouthed surprise that he had to laugh, albeit a little painfully. It was difficult to watch Bobby manhandle Dinah in precisely the way he’d like to manhandle Kate.
Bobby came up for air and dove into his beer, surfacing with a loud, satisfied smack of his lips. “Damn, this was a good idea. Bernie!” he bellowed. “More beer!”
From that point on there was a mutual unspoken agreement that no serious business would be discussed, no Dreyer, no Jeffrey, no Jane, no abusive husbands or dope-dealing video renters or arsonous murderers. There was flirting, between Bobby and Dinah and between Jim and Dinah and between Bobby and Kate. There might even have been a little between Kate and Jim. The stories started tall and got taller. Dinah danced with Bobby again, and then Jim, and then Old Sam, who had patented a kind of schottische-rhumba combination that was the dread of every woman in the Park.
After a while it got crowded enough that Bernie missed a signal for another round and Kate went to the bar. Bernie was busy filling a tray, and while she was waiting she said hello to the man glowering into a glass of beer.
He nodded, a single, straight-up-and-down movement, his ill humor making his black face look like a thunderhead, ready to shoot lightning at any moment. “Ms. Shugak.”
“Didn’t see you come in,” she said. She thought about asking him to join their table. She thought better of it.
“Robert did.”
Ah. If so, Bobby had not mentioned it to the rest of them, which told its own story. She looked down the bar and caught Bernie’s eye. He held up one finger, made a circular motion, raised his eyebrows. She nodded.
“You appear to have some influence with my brother,” Jeffrey said stiffly.
Hating to ask favors of an inferior, Kate thought. “Nobody has influence on Bobby Clark,” she said. “He’s his own man. He does what he wants, when he wants.”
She could tell he was resisting the impulse to glare. “Nevertheless,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell him you think it’s a good idea to see his father alive one last time.”
“I don’t know that it is,” Kate said.
This time he didn’t resist. “He’s his father. He wants to see his second son before he dies. That can’t be too hard even for you to understand.”
It was the “even for you” that did it. “You hate it that he’s happy, don’t you,” she said, looking at him as if she were peering through a microscope. “You could have handled it better if he were broke, hungry, maybe homeless. Instead he’s got a home and a wife – ”
He snorted.
“ – and a child, and a life. Your father made Tennessee so unliveable for him that he escaped into the army, and war, to get away from it. Just out of curiosity, did you know he’d left both legs in Vietnam before you came? Did your father know?
Did either of you bother to find out where he went and what he did when he left you?“
“He ran away.”
“Which at this point only confirms my already high opinion of his intelligence,” Kate said, and watched with interest as his face flushed red enough to be seen even given the already dark color of his skin and the dim light of the bar.
Fortunately, Bernie finally scooted down the counter to toss her a package of beef jerky. He felt the tension between her and Jeffrey Clark and gave her a quizzical look.
Kate tossed the jerky back. “Mutt’s over at Auntie Vi’s with Katya and Johnny,” she said. “But thanks.”
Bernie gave Jeffrey Clark one last look, decided it would be unwise to meddle with a volcano that close to eruption, and busied himself with filling glasses. “How’s the hunt going?”
She gave him a long, considering look, and gave a nonanswer. “We’re taking the night off.”
“Oh. Ah. Well. Here you go.” He shoved the tray at her and answered a call for another round at the opposite end of the bar, a look of barely suppressed relief on his face.
She delivered the drinks and stood for a moment, indecisive. “What, you’re waiting for a fucking invitation!” Bobby roared.
She jerked her head. “Gotta flush,” she said, but when she got to the back of the room she ignored the door into the rest room and went out onto the back porch instead. A set of stairs led down into the rest of Bernie’s domain.
There were two neat rows of cabins, each big enough for a queen-sized bed and a bathroom, which could not, contrary to rumor, be rented by the hour. There were two covered picnic areas with brick barbecues, and tables and benches made of logs sawn in half. A neatly gravelled trail led through a stand of birch trees to a two-story house built of imported cedar, fronted with a large deck held down by a full suite of wrought-iron lawn furniture and an enormous gas grill. Kate went up a wide stair-case laden with deep, square flower boxes at tastefully interspersed points and knocked gently on the French double doors. After a few moments they opened. “Hello, Kate.” “Hi, Enid. Could I talk to you for a few minutes?”