14

Dandy was still torqued at what he saw as Jim Chopin’s patronizing dismissal of Dandy’s services. He was so torqued that he had slept alone the night before in spite of overtures on the parts of two different women.

His bed was located in the apartment he’d fitted up over the warehouse that sat on the five acres of land he’d received as a result of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1972 back when he was all of nine years old. The five acres sat on the river, and his father had built the warehouse as a place to park his fishing boat during the winter. Dandy’s apartment had started life as a net loft, but then the Native Association had begun paying dividends and Billy had started paying someone else to mend his gear, and Dandy had asked for the space. Billy shrugged. It was Dandy’s land, after all.

Dandy hadn’t done much beyond installing a bathroom and enough of a kitchen to allow his girlfriends to cook for him. The floor was hardwood with a couple of thick sheepskins scattered around for effect. A king-sized bed dominated one corner, with nightstands on either side with drawers big enough to accommodate condoms in bargain-size boxes and a weekend’s worth of clean clothes for sleepovers. In another corner there was a wide, long brown leather couch next to a Barcalounger, which sat in front of a 32-inch television. There was also a combination VHS/DVD player, and a set of shelves with an extensive selection of movies, most of them starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. Dandy didn’t bother with satellite television, as he wasn’t into any sport you couldn’t play from a horizontal position and everything else was blood and gore. Women didn’t like blood and gore, as a rule. Dandy was willing to watch anything that got women into the mood, and he was continually expanding his movie library with that end in view. Audrey Hepburn was a recent discovery. The scene with Peter OToole under the museum stairs in How to Steal a Million had in recent testing proven itself to be fail-safe. He was hoping it would come out on DVD before his VHS copy was completely worn through.

Hands behind his head, he frowned at the ceiling. He was still annoyed with Jim for blowing off his efforts in the Len Dreyer case, but he was willing to forgive him because he knew what it was like to be led around by his cock, and he sympathized.

He was more annoyed with Kate, and he couldn’t decide if it was because she was the one leading Jim around, or if it was because she’d never tried to lead him, Dandy, around.

Easily sidetracked, he wondered about that. It wasn’t like Kate was a nun, she’d had her share. There was Ethan Int-Hout, and that doofus Anchorage investigator with more and blonder hair than Farrah Fawcett, and then there was Jack Morgan. The Kate-and-Jack thing went way back. Jeeze, Jack had been an okay guy, but sticking to one partner for, well, hell, he guessed it had been years. Years, for crissake. Dandy’s mind boggled. A real man wanted a little variety in his life. Sleeping with the same woman for years, years, that wasn’t variety, that was monotony, that was boredom. Dandy loved undressing a woman for the first time, loved the small discoveries that came with the act, the placement of a mole, the bony knees, the pillowy thighs. He loved finding out that a natural blonde wasn’t. Was she or wasn’t she? Only Dandy and her hairdresser knew for sure.

The trouble was, you could only undress a woman for the first time once. Fortunately, there were many, many women out there, and equally fortunately, many of them were happy to take a month’s romp at face value. Dandy Mike scorned to break hearts; he wanted whatever woman was in his life to have as good a time as he was, until it was time for both of them to move on. He prided himself that they almost always did. Oh, he’d had his failures, including one horrific experience when the girl of the month introduced herself to his mother and asked for help in planning the wedding, but on the whole he was fairly pleased with life in general. He attended the marriages of his classmates and friends with a smiling face, but privately he couldn’t imagine why any sane man would feel it necessary to settle on just one woman. It wasn’t natural, he thought, and just look at nature, while we’re on the subject. Why, he was reading an article just the other day, all about how new DNA studies were showing biologists that geese weren’t as monogamous as had been previously thought. The male of every species was designed to spread his seed as far and wide as possible. It strengthened the gene pool, insured the survival of the species. Dandy hadn’t finished college, but even he knew that.

Not that Dandy ever wanted to have children. He shuddered at the thought. He didn’t know how Bobby and Dinah were going to manage, always supposing for some unfathomable reason they still wanted to sleep together at all, in that big open house with a rug rat crawling all over it.

Nope, no question about it, old Jack must have been half a bubble off, as they said in the contracting business.

Where had he heard that saying? Oh, yeah. Len Dreyer. On the deck of the Freya last September.

Which reminded him of his grievance. Kate had old Chopper Jim on the hook, no doubt about that, she was just waiting until it was good and set before reeling it in. Thought she had the job landed at the same time, probably.

No two ways about it, Dandy was going to have to solve this Dreyer thing on his own just to get Jim’s attention. Once he had it, why, Jim would just naturally see what an asset Dandy would be to the local constabulary. And hopefully Dandy would never have to work this hard again.

The information he’d collected from his ex-girlfriends hadn’t made much of an impression. His face screwed up in thought. Well. He’d done a lot of jobs with Dreyer. Maybe he could put together the list of names he’d scrounged from his girlfriends, and maybe put in dates when he’d worked with Dreyer. Then maybe he could go talk to the people who had employed the two of them. They’d call that something on television – constructing a timeline, that was it. He’d construct a timeline for old Len Dreyer, was what he’d do, charting all old Len’s activities leading up until the day he died. Dandy didn’t know what day Len had died, but he dismissed that as a minor problem.

He swung out of bed, refreshed, and took a quick shower. He was scrambling some eggs when there was a knock at his door. He opened it to find Stacy Shumagin on his doorstep.

Well, shoot. Len Dreyer was dead, wasn’t he? He could wait.

The white Cessna with the gold shield on the side touched down neatly in a perfect three-point landing. It rolled to a halt in front of George Perry’s hangar, who waited for the prop to stop turning before ambling over to open the door. “Hey, Kate.” He looked across Kate at Jim. “Hey, Chopin. Taking business away from me, taking the food out of the mouths of my children.”

Since George had no children, this was taken for the jest it was.

“Hey, George,” Johnny piped up.

“Hey, squirt. How was Anchorage?”

“Educational,” Johnny said promptly, without the trace of a smile.

Kate grinned. “Think I can get out of this flying tin can, Perry?”

George stepped back and she hopped out. “Well. From the expression on your faces I’d say it was a successful trip. So, who did kill Len Dreyer?”

Jim paused, one foot in the plane, one foot on the ground. “Oh, shit.” And it had been such a nice ride home.

Kate turned to him. “That’s right, you said you were picking up the autopsy report.”

He frowned at her. “Not in front of the civilians.”

“You people are just no fun at all,” George said, and ambled back into the hangar, where his Super Cub could be seen, cowling peeled back and engine exposed. Even from where they were standing, it gleamed with the care George lavished upon it.

The airstrip was dark with overnight rain, but not enough to be muddy. A low, thin layer of cotton-puff clouds was dissolving beneath the noon sun. There was a flash of white in the brush across the strip and Mutt gave a joyous bark and shot off in pursuit. Johnny gave a sigh of pure joy and headed for the post office. They’d only been gone overnight, and on a weekend at that, but like every other Bush dweller Johnny lived for the mail, and he had new clothes coming. If there was a package slip he could always go round to Mrs. Jeppsen’s house in back of the post office and talk her into opening up long enough to get it for him.

“So?” Kate said to Jim.

“ME says Dreyer’s been dead about six months, give or take three in either direction. She’s going to do some more tests, but that’s her best guess and she’s thinking her final one. She says the deep-freeze effect delayed rigor and lividity and she doesn’t know if he was sitting, standing, or lying down when he caught it. Death resulted from massive trauma caused by a direct hit from a shotgun. From the stippling, she thinks the perp was less than four feet away.”

“Did you have a chance to talk to ballistics?”

“From the pattern, they think it might be one of the older models, maybe a Remington, maybe a Winchester, maybe old enough to be one of the discontinued models.”

“That might help. Might be fewer of them around.”

He shrugged. “You’re dreaming and we both know it. Who in the Park doesn’t have an old shotgun his father left him?”

“Me,” Kate said.

“Oh. Right. Forgot. Sorry.”

“Yeah, well.” Her turn to shrug. “So nothing we didn’t know before, or not much.”

“Nope.”

“Mind if I say this totally sucks?”

“Nope.” The sun broke through the clouds and he watched her lift her face into it and close her eyes. He wondered what she would look like naked in the sun, if she would turn her whole body into the light and warmth the way she did her face. He wanted to find out. He did most sincerely want to find out, preferably before his need robbed him of independent mobility. He cleared his throat. “Rein in that hairy Bigfoot of yours and we’ll drop her and the kid at Auntie Vi’s and go see if the cafe is open. Talk it out over coffee.”

She had been about to suggest Auntie Vi’s, but Auntie Vi would insist on sitting in on the deliberations. “I keep forgetting there’s a cafe now. A cafe in Niniltna. What’s next, a Wal-Mart?”

“Bite your tongue.”

She loitered deliberately until he had driven off. Before she whistled up Johnny and Mutt, she walked over to the hangar. “Looking good, George,” she said, circumnavigating the Super Cub.

He didn’t preen, but it was close. “Thanks.”

“Nice to see a well-maintained aircraft. Gives you faith in the airline, and the man who flies it.”

His head came up like an animal scenting a predator. “Gee, thanks, Kate. Nice of you to say.” He turned his head and looked at her. “Was there something else?”

“You used to hang with Gary Drussell, didn’t you? Do some hunting together every year?”

A brief pause. “Sure. What of it?”

“I was wondering,” she said in a casual tone that fooled nobody. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“Last time I saw Gary?” he said thoughtfully, wiping down an open-end box wrench that didn’t need it.

“Yeah.” She waited.

“Gosh, I’m not sure, Kate.” Minute attention was paid to the wrench. “I guess when he moved out last summer. Actually, I guess it was closer to spring, right after breakup.”

“Really,” Kate said.

The face he presented to her was wide-eyed. “Yeah, right around breakup, I figure.”

“Long time,” Kate said. “He didn’t even come back to go hunting in the fall?”

“Nope.” George hunched over the engine. “Hell of a thing, what moving to Anchorage will do to your priorities.”

“Yeah, hell of a thing,” Kate said.

The cafe was still enough of a novelty to be crowded at noon on Sunday, although Laurel Meganack behind the counter was all by herself enough of a draw for most Park rats. Jeffrey Clark sat alone in a corner, scrupulously polite to Laurel, ignoring everyone else. Jim jerked his head. “What’s with Lord High Everything Else?”

Kate laughed. Jeffrey Clark’s eyes snapped up and narrowed suspiciously. He was sure they were laughing at him, mostly because he didn’t see anything else they could be laughing about.

There were two stools available at the end of the counter. Kate copped the one against the wall and leaned against it so she could face Jim. He ordered their coffee and turned his back on the rest of the room so as to face her. It gave them the illusion of privacy. “I can’t wait till the post gets built,” he said.

She smiled faintly. “Make it easier on the interviews.”

“No kidding.” The coffee came. “Talk.”

She doctored her mug liberally with sugar and evaporated milk, which an intelligent Laurel ordered in by the case and for a serving of which she added fifty cents onto the price. “Okay,” she said, sitting back. “Some of this will be new to you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Talk, Shugak.”

She told him about Enid Koslowski.

He whistled. “Bernie caught them in the act?”

“Yes.”

“There’s motive for murder enough right there.”

She was silent.

“What else?” he said.

She looked over his shoulder at Laurel, carrying five plates in two hands to a table where Old Sam and four of his cronies were waiting. “Seems Bernie and Len both shared the favors of Miss Meganack, here.”

“No kidding?” He hung his chin on his shoulder for a moment. “Can’t say as I blame them.” He looked back at her and noticed no trace of jealousy. That could be either a good thing or a bad thing. “Did she dump one for the other?”

“She says not. She says she was overcome by Len’s tool belt, it was a one-time thing on the floor of the kitchen when he was doing some fix-up stuff for her before the cafe opened. She was surprised when he didn’t try to turn it into more.”

“So am I.”

“I’m not,” she said, “but I’ll get to that in a minute.”

“Take your time, I’m still on the kitchen floor.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said without heat. “Enid says it was pretty much the same for her.”

“Enid made the first move?”

“Yeah.”

“Seems a little out of character.”

“It is. It was when Bernie was sleeping with Laurel. Enid found out.”

“Ah,” he said, understanding. “A revenge fuck.”

“Two of them, to be exact.”

“The second one being when Bernie walked in.”

“She seduced Dreyer aka Duffy in one of the cabins. I’m just going to call him Dreyer if you don’t mind,” she added. “Main reason I hate aliases, just gets too damn confusing.”

He considered. “Enid wanted Bernie to catch them at it. Catch her at it.”

“Yeah.”

“Nice little quadrangle, if that’s the right word. Bernie sleeps with Laurel, Enid finds out and sleeps with Dreyer, Dreyer sleeps with Laurel.” He straightened. “Wait a minute. How serious was Bernie about Laurel?”

“Not enough to leave Enid,” Kate said sharply. “And not enough to kill Dreyer, either, even if he knew about Dreyer and Laurel. Which he probably didn’t.”

“Enid can talk,” Jim said.

“I know. But I don’t think she did about this. The less conversation she had with Bernie about Laurel, the better.”

Jim wasn’t slow. “He didn’t care, did he?”

“Who?”

“Bernie. He didn’t care when he caught Enid with Dreyer.”

She said nothing.

“Ouch,” he said. “That had to sting.”

“Not enough to murder.”

He gave her a thoughtful look, and left it alone for now. “What else?” She met his eyes and he said, “Come on, Kate. You’re holding out on me. You found something out in Anchorage. What?”

Laurel came over and topped off their mugs. Kate barely registered on her peripheral vision, but she gave Jim a wide, warm, one might even say inviting smile, and underlined it by putting a little extra into the sway of her hips as she walked away. Waitresses. He watched her go with pure male appreciation. When he turned back he found Kate looking at him, one eyebrow raised. “Don’t change the subject,” he said firmly.

She thought about it, but he was right. She took a deep breath. “Remember Gary Drussell?”

He frowned. “Can’t say as I do.”

“He was a fisherman out of Cordova. Had a homestead about ten miles out of Niniltna. Married. Three daughters.”

About to drink, Jim put his mug down heavily.

“Gary’s had one lousy season after another, going on ten years now. Commercial fishing in Alaska isn’t what it once was. The two oldest daughters were college age or about to be. He decided to sell out, move to Anchorage, and go back to school, learn a new trade. So he put his homestead up for sale. And of course, like every other homestead staked out a hundred years ago, it needed work.”

“And he hired Len Dreyer to do it.”

“Yes.”

“Which daughter?”

“The youngest. I think. Nobody admitted anything. But I’m pretty sure.” Kate shook her head. “I don’t know, the vibes I got from the mom and the other two daughters… well, they were pretty intense. Dreyer might have given them a pass because they were too old, but I’d bet money the youngest girl’s been talking. Gary himself is in total denial.”

With studied casualness, Jim said, “Did you ask him the last time he was in the Park?”

Kate remained silent.

Couldn’t, he thought. Couldn’t bring herself to open that wound any wider. “Does Gary fly?”

“I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.” The quickness of her answer told him she’d given it some thought.

“I’ll check for a license. In the meantime, you ask George if he remembers ferrying Drussell in or out last fall.”

She muttered assent.

“Has to be done, Kate. No matter how much it’s starting to look like justifiable homicide.”

“I know. I know. I just… I know.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”

They were sitting in glum silence when Kate looked up to see Jeffrey Clark standing at Jim’s shoulder. “I talk to you?” he said.

She was almost glad to see him. “Sure,” she said.

He jerked his head. “Not here.”

She followed him outside.

He pulled the collar of his jacket together. “I want my brother to come home with me.”

“You’ve made that pretty clear,” she said.

“He won’t come.”

“Like I said before,” Kate said, displaying for her a remarkable amount of patience, “that’s pretty much his decision to make.”

He spoke with a kind of dogged persistence that she had to admire. “I want you to help me to convince him that it’s the right thing for him to do.”

Kate did sigh this time. She hated having to repeat herself. “First of all, Bobby is a grown man. He’s kind of already got his pass/fail in Living 101. Second, he’s my best friend, and the surest way I know to screw that up is to start telling him how to live his life. Third? I don’t know that his going home is the right thing to do.”

He glared at her. “Our father is dying.”

“I know the story,” she said, holding up a hand to stem the tide. “Spare me the lecture. Tell me something. Why do you really want Bobby to go home again?” Again, she held up a hand. “No. I want the real reason. From anything Bobby’s told me, your father has been pretty hard-nosed all his life, with fixed notions about right and wrong. Bobby screwed up and your father didn’t just turn his back on him, he condemned him out of hand at Sunday-go-to-meeting in front of all your neighbors and friends. You were there, weren’t you? You saw and heard it?”

He looked away, face set in stubborn lines. “Yes.”

“Well, then.”

“He has to forgive him.”

“Why?”

“Because my father’s not dying easy,” Jeffrey said heavily. “I’ve been calling home every day. He’s calling for Robert. It’s all he can think about. He wants him to come home. He needs him to come home.”

She examined him long enough for him to begin to look uncomfortable. He might even have squirmed.

“What?” he said, defensive now.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you sound like a human being, with all our faults and frailties,” she said.

He stiffened.

“Oh, lose the attitude,” she said, exasperated. “Swear to Christ, if I didn’t believe my own eyes I wouldn’t think you were in any way related to Bobby.”

Taken aback, he said, “I beg your pardon?”

“So Bobby married a white woman,” she said, “so what? So he’s best buds with a Native woman, and he’s friendly with more, and a bunch of white folks besides. I don’t know that you’ve noticed, Jeffrey, but this ain’t Tennessee. It’s a lot bigger, and with way fewer people. It gives us a lot of freedom and a lot of autonomy, and at the same time draws us closer together, no matter who we are or where we come from.”

She paused for breath, and went on in a milder tone. “The Park has a way of weeding out the unfit. Bobby fits. He always has. Because it’s not what you’re used to doesn’t make it not his home. Okay,” she added, “I know there’s like a triple negative in there somewhere, but you’ve been here what, a week now? You’ve had time to see that-well, hell.” She turned to go back inside. Over her shoulder she said, “Bobby’s found a place he loves that loves him back. Near as I can make out, he’s been looking for that place ever since your father booted him out.”

“He didn’t boot him out! Robert ran away!”

She thought of Johnny. “In this case, Jeffrey, I don’t see the difference.”

“Everything okay?” Jim said as she slid back onto her stool.

“No,” she said.

“You think Bobby should go home?”

She curved her hand around a now cool mug. “I keep thinking about Emaa,” she said.

“Your grandmother?”

“Yeah. I was angry at her for a long time. We were just starting to work things out when she died. I have some regrets.”

“ ‘Remorse is the ultimate in self-abuse,” “ Jim said.

“Who said that?”

“Travis McGee.”

She couldn’t help the grin. “And a better detective than you or I’ll ever be, Chopin.”

“One of your greater twentieth-century philosophers,” he agreed. “You know what they say about hindsight.”

He was trying to comfort her in that ham-handed way men do, and she was a little touched. “It’s okay, really. But Bobby, at the very least, needs to say good-bye. From what Jeffrey says, it doesn’t sound like he’s got a lot of time left to get it done.”

“Not your problem,” he said tentatively.

She fixed him with a steady look. “Like hell it isn’t. What kind of friend am I if I see him in trouble and I don’t try to help?”

“Depends on if he wants you to, I would think.”

“And you would think wrong.”

“Okay,” he said, “obviously not an argument I’m destined to win. Besides, I think you’re probably right. There’ll be an unsaid good-bye hanging out there until the end of his life if he doesn’t.”

“If it was your father?” Kate said.

“I’d go home, make my obeisance. I don’t know that my father would notice, but I’d be doing it more for me than for him anyway.”

And Kate had thought her relationship with her grandmother was complicated. Men and their fathers raised an appreciation of the word dysfunctional to a whole new level.

For a long time she’d felt suffocated by Emaa’s expectations. The bloodlines that tied her to the Park were tenacious to the point of strangulation. You can’t choose your relatives, as the old saw went, but she wondered now, why not? Why not walk away, as Bobby had, and build your own from scratch in a place where no one knew you and you had no history? Why not start a family the same way, from the ground up, gathering together people you liked and respected and learned to cherish? What was so awful goddamned special about blood, anyway?

“Kate,” Jim said, waving a hand in front of her face.

“Huh?” She recollected herself. “Oh. Sorry. What?”

“Want to take a look at the site?”

He was referring to the acre of ground next to the Niniltna Native Association building that the state had acquired at an almost but not quite extortionate price, upon which the ground was even then being prepared for Jim’s new post.

“Sure.” She’d stayed as far away from the whole trooper post thing as she could get all winter long, but Jim was going to be in a good position to throw work her way. The homestead was hers outright, along with the buildings and tools and vehicles. She owed no one any money, and she’d always been able to feed and clothe herself off the money she made from odd jobs in the Park, from fishing to mining to guiding. But she had Johnny to think of now, and the memory of Jane’s words. J won’t pay you a dime in child support. Personal angle aside, she had good cause to stay on Trooper Chopin’s good side.

The trouble was, she had a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to be able to leave out the personal angle anytime soon. Kate Shugak’s life’s work was spent searching for truth, and it was therefore folly for her to ignore a home truth staring her in the face. Something was going on between her and the big trooper. She didn’t know what, exactly, and she didn’t know if it was bad or good, but it was past time she admitted it was there.

She followed the white Chevy Crew Cab up the hill and parked behind it. They walked across the road and looked at the site, which to his faint surprise showed signs of industry in the form of a completed cinder block foundation. “All you need is some lumber and the framers,” Kate said, “and you’ll have yourself a post.” She looked at him. “Know where you’re going to live yet?”

“Figured I’d build.”

“Got your eye on some land?”

“I talked to Billy, and Ruthe. She says she might carve off a slice along the river edge of John Letourneau’s place for me. So long as it reverts back to the Kanuyaq Land Trust upon my death.”

Kate grinned. “I love Ruthe Bauman. You always know where you stand with Ruthe.”

“Yeah, dead last,” he said, laughing a little. “Way behind the land, that’s for damn sure.”

“You going to do it?”

He shrugged. “It’s a prime piece of land, great view, all cleared and ready. It’d amount to taking out a lifetime lease, with no buildup of equity. But hell, I’ll have all I need on retirement. Yeah, I’ll probably take her up on it.” His eyes glinted. “Build me a comfy little house where I can entertain.”

“Or not,” she said.

“Not an option,” he said, and smiled.

“What?” she said.

The smile widened. She’d never trusted that grin; it always made her think of the first pass of gray fins in deep blue water.

“What?” she said again.

“This dance we do,” he said. “See Kate. See Kate run. See Jim chase Kate. We going to get tired of this anytime soon?”

It was kind of silly, now she came to think of it. “Habit, I guess,” she said.

“My problem is I’m competing with a ghost,” Jim said.

She stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s true,” he said, almost in despair, or as close to it as proper macho feeling would permit. “Tell me something. Isn’t there one thing Jack did that drove you insane? Did he flush spit between his teeth instead of floss? Did he fart in public? Did he sing outside the shower? Anything?”

She thought about it, really hard, for a few moments. Finally, she said, “He couldn’t drive a stick shift.”

“What?”

“He couldn’t drive a stick shift to save his life,” she said. “First gear, we’d jerk down the street like the car had Parkinson’s.”

Jim started to smile.

“Second gear, the jolt would throw me against the seat belt so hard I’d bruise my breastbone. Getting into third was a little easier, although he always went there before he had enough revs and we’d slow way down and everybody in back of us would honk. And he never, not once did he ever find reverse on the first try.”

Jim was grinning now.

It was odd, but she had the feeling that Jack was grinning right along with him. Kate was not usually a creature of impulse, but then she’d hate to be called predictable, either. She stepped forward and was pleased to see that the shark’s grin had faded. “What?” he said, not without apprehension.

She stood on tiptoe and slid a hand around his neck, enjoying the surprise in his eyes. With her other hand she pulled off his cap and tossed it behind her. “Shut up and kiss me,” she said.

He did, to such purpose that neither of them heard the vehicle pull to a stop behind them.

“Excuse me,” Billy Mike said apologetically, “but really, guys. You might want to take it indoors.”

They looked over his shoulder and found the entire staff of the Niniltna Native Association crowded into Billy’s Ford Explorer, faces peering inquisitively out the windows. Auntie Joy even waved.

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