A deeper sleep (26 page)

"Any mention made of Mr. Koslowski's gold collection, how much Louis might have admired it?"

She looked straight at him then, the trace of an emotion he couldn't identify at the back of her eyes. "No." She looked over his shoulder again. "I'm sorry, Sergeant Chopin, but I have to go now."

He followed her gaze and saw that the Smiths had broken formation and that Father Smith was headed their way with a stride that had regained its purpose. "All right. If you think of anything else that Louis might have said, anything at all, please contact me at the state trooper post in Niniltna."

"Of course she will." Smith's voice boomed out as if it originated from a burning bush. He put an arm around Abigail's shoulders and ushered her away from Jim's contaminating presence. "Good day, Sergeant."

Who said
good day
anymore? Jim watched the way Abigail's shoulders shrank within her father's arm. Man, this story just kept getting better and better.

With a leaden heart, he took his leave of the Smith family and drove to the Roadhouse.

It wasn't even eight o'clock, and the parking lot was jammed. Jim had to park on the road, narrowly escaping being flattened by a truckload of Grosdidiers roaring up in their Dodge Ram Super-charger. They slid to a hockey stop eighteen inches off his starboard bow. Peter, driving, gave him a cheeky grin. "Hey, Jim! Here to celebrate?"

Without waiting for a reply, the four of them bailed out of the pickup and thundered across the parking lot and up the Roadhouse stairs like a herd of stampeding cattle. The Grosdidier brothers had been four of the starting five on the Kanuyaq Kings basketball team and were the proximate cause of two of the Class C state championship banners hanging from the ceiling of the Niniltna High School gym. Fishermen, hunters, trappers, mechanics, carpenters, and miners by day, they were also among the first batch of graduates of an emergency medical response team class held in the Park and coauthored by the state and the Niniltna Native Association, one among many of Ekaterina Shugak's best notions. Now in their early twenties, the Grosdidier brothers were still young enough to find the idea of riding to the rescue romantic, and they had always been brash enough to believe they could make a difference. It lightened Jim's load just to think of them, which was why he hadn't nailed their collective ass for reckless driving on the spot.

His steps up the front stairs of the Roadhouse were a heavy contrast to the joyous ones of the Grosdidier brothers.

When he opened the door, the noise nearly knocked him backward. The place was packed to the rafters. Literally, as one of the Kvasnikof boys—Grassim? Virgil?—was doing chin-ups on one of the rafters while assorted girls counted below. "Thirty-six! Fifty-eight! Seventy-four!" By which Jim deduced that the drinking had started early.

Bobby and Dinah must have come here straight from the post. No Katya, probably left her with Auntie Vi. Or no, because all four aunties, Vi, Joy, Edna, and Balasha, were seated at the round table in the back corner. They didn't look quite natural, because their laps were empty of whatever quilt they were currently working on.

They were facing the reassuringly usual mugs of Irish coffee, however. Balasha looked as if she had been crying. Trust softhearted Balasha Shugak to weep over the death of an asshole like Louis Deem.

Old Sam Dementieff sat at a table where the old farts were six deep, holding forth through an inhalation of Alaskan Amber on all the times Louis Deem had fucked everyone over, in the Park, in Ahtna, in Cordova, in the state of Alaska, and last Jim heard he'd moved Outside and was probably going for worldwide. At another table, Mac Devlin and Dan O'Brien were actually having a conversation without coming to blows, a sight that shocked Jim into momentary immobility. A congratulatory and painful punch on his arm from Demetri Totemoff got him started again. George Perry grinned at him from the crowd and said something.

Jim couldn't hear him. "What?"

"Best job I ever had!" George said in a near bellow. "Rather be hauling his sorry carcass to Anchorage than have to haul one of his girls to the Ahtna hospital again!"

Jim would never again have to take one of Louis Deem's victims to the morgue in Anchorage, either. Growing comfortable with the stain on his professional soul, he found the reminder comforting.

Multiple toasts were raised to the late, unlamented Louis Deem. Jim's presence was no sooner generally recognized than someone started cheering. He was slapped on the back, his reluctant hand wrung until it was numb, and by the time he got to the bar, he had four drinks waiting for him.

Bernie was in his accustomed place. "Jim," he said, unsmiling. "What can I do for you?"

Jim had to raise his voice over the hubbub. "A little conversation, if you don't mind, Bernie."

Those nearest him on his side of the bar overheard and stopped talking to hear more. It spread.

"What do you want to talk about?" Bernie said.

"Louis Deem."

Bernie shrugged and reached for a bar rag to polish an already spotless glass. "I hear he's dead. He killed my wife and my child. Don't expect me to cry any crocodile tears."

A muted but distinct murmur of approval rippled out over the growing silence.

"Maybe we could go over to your house to have this conversation," Jim said.

"Maybe we could have it right here," Bernie said pleasantly. "Say whatever you have to say, Jim." Bernie included his customers with a nod of his head. "I'm among friends here, and I've got nothing to hide."

Jim looked around the bar, which by now was dead silent. The jukebox was between songs, and someone had even turned off the huge television hanging from the roof. "Okay," he said. "Did you hear how Deem died?"

Bernie examined a minute speck on the glass. "I was told he took a shotgun blast to the chest."

There was a murmur of approval. Jim nodded. "You own a twelve-gauge, don't you?"

This time the murmur was less approving. Jim could almost smell the hostility gathering. "Yes, I do," Bernie said.

"Used it lately?"

"Not since duck-hunting season last fall," Bernie said.

"I'll need to take a look at it."

"Jesus H. Christ on a crutch," one of the old farts started to say. He was waved to silence by Old Sam, who had fixed Jim with a bright, keen eye.

Jim raised his voice to be heard. "Routine. You understand."

"Of course." Bernie waved a hand in the direction of his house. "You know where the gun rack is. Feel free."

"Thanks." Jim looked around and found an unfriendly eye everywhere he looked. It actually felt more comfortable to him than the hail-fellow-well-met cheer he'd been initially greeted with. "As I'm sure you already know, Louis Deem was found dead on the road up to the Step."

"I heard."

"Deem's roommate, Howie Katelnikof, says Deem never came home after I let him out day before yesterday. Everybody's best guess is that Deem went out to see Abigail Smith."

"What does Abigail say?"

"That he never got there."

Bernie nodded. "I assume by that that she's still living."

"Yes."

"Good for her."

Jim sighed and pulled at the bill of his cap. "Bernie, I hate like hell having to ask this, but I've got to know where you were night before last between the hours of five and eleven."

"Jesus Christ, Chopin!" someone said.

Bernie's voice overrode the protest. "That when Deem was killed?"

"From what I can guess by way of body temp and rigor, yeah. I'm hoping the ME can give us something more exact."

"Uh-huh." Bernie nodded. "Well now, let me see. I was home cooking dinner for my kids from seven o'clock on. We ate, I helped them with their homework, I put them to bed. Kathleen had a hard time getting to sleep, so I read to her until almost eleven. And then I went to bed myself."

"Where were you from five to seven?"

"From five to seven?" Bernie didn't have to raise his voice to be heard, because if someone had dropped a feather on the Road-house's stained floor at that moment, it would have sounded like a bomb going off. "Well, at five I stopped off here to talk to Laurel, see how she was handling things and to let her know I'd be back at work today. And from around five thirty to six thirty yesterday, I was having a cup of coffee at the Riverside Cafe, on Laurel. She's got that new espresso machine, and Heather likes to have someone to practice her lattes on."

Jim rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension that had been building there for what seemed like months. "Anybody you know see you there?"

A chuckle, quickly muffled, rippled around the room.

Bernie didn't smile. "Why, yes. If you will recall, I was having coffee with you. And as I also recall, you think Heather has the americano down."

Someone gasped. Someone else laughed out loud. He looked up and saw Old Sam. Old Sam wasn't laughing, just watching, and when he caught Jim's eye, he bent his head in acknowledgment and, Jim thought, approval.

There were no flies on Old Sam Dementieff.

"Yeah," Jim said sheepishly to Bernie, "I guess that was me." He produced a tired smile. "Sorry, Bernie. Been a long two days. I had to ask."

Bernie looked sympathetic. "I know you did, Jim. Have a beer?"

Jim gave his head a regretful shake. "Take a rain check."

They shook hands, and as Jim walked out, the crowd parted for him in silence. He rode the edge of a building wave of conversation and before the door closed fully behind him the party was back in full swing.

He stopped in the middle of the parking lot and pulled his cap off, wiping the sweat from his forehead on his sleeve.

"Hot in there?"

He knew that voice. He lowered his arm and looked into Kate's eyes.

Another truck pulled up; more merrymakers disgorged themselves and detoured around the silent couple to disappear into the Roadhouse.

"How did you hear?" he said. Mutt bounded over—well, maybe she didn't quite bound, but she flounced pretty good—and shoved her nose into his hand. Out of habit he scratched behind her ears and she wriggled with most of her old delight.

"Billy Mike came out and told me," she said. "Is it true? Deem was shot at close range with a shotgun?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Sometime night before last between five and eleven, is my guess. I had George haul the body to the lab. I'm hoping the ME can get something a little less approximate, but you know how it is."

"Yeah," she said. "It was cold that night. That'll screw things up."

"Yeah."

"And let's face it, they probably won't try that hard. It's not like they hadn't had the opportunity to work on a Deem-related corpse before this."

"No."

She nodded at the Roadhouse. "What did Bernie say?"

"He's got a solid alibi. Lots of witnesses."

Some of the rigidity went out of her spine. "Good." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Good," she said again.

"I had to talk to him," he said, driven to defend himself against an attack she hadn't made.

She raised her shoulders and let them fall again. "He would always be the obvious suspect."

"It was routine," he said.

"Practically in the handbook," she said.