A deeper sleep (32 page)

"Nothing," he said. He didn't know why he'd lied. He only knew he couldn't tell her the truth.

She caught sight of the photos. "Oh."

"I was putting the file in order before I put it away."

She looked at the photographs. "Ugly."

"Very."

"At least he's dead."

How could he tell her? How could he tell her that her simple cousin had committed a double murder? How could he tell Willard's grandmother, Auntie Balasha, that good woman, who saw only the best in everyone she met?

"Jim?"

He met her eyes and thought back to that moment of truth in this very office that bleak afternoon.

"What is it you want me to do, Bernie?”

"Your job.”

And then the phone call the next day, and he had gone, knowing what it meant, practicing law enforcement professional that he was, sworn to protect and to defend, to fight for the right, to uphold the law, to enforce the Constitution of the United States of America. He had gone, knowing exactly what the invitation meant, and he had spent ninety minutes sitting there talking to Bernie, although he couldn't for the life of him remember what had been said.

If he was right, if Willard had killed the Koslowskis, then Louis Deem had been killed in error.

How could he tell Kate any of this?

And how could he not?

There was a knock at the door. Someone tried the handle. "Jim?" It was Auntie Vi. "You in there, Jim?"

Kate got up and unlocked the door. Auntie Vi stood behind it, her eyes stern, her mouth a white, strained line. She looked straight at Kate. "Come. Now."

"What is it, Auntie? What's happened?"

Jim got to his feet, only to be stayed by an unmistakably authoritative palm. She spoke to Kate and only to Kate. "Billy."

A tendril of dread slithered up Kate's spine. "What about him?"

"Dead." The word was a single-syllable dirge.

Jim moved out from behind his desk, and was again halted by Auntie Vi's hand. "Heart attack. Playing basketball with town team at the gym. Annie tell him and tell him he need to lose weight, need to stop eating salt, stop sneaking smokes. He not listen." She was still looking unblinkingly at Kate. "You come."

The dread spread into her gut. "Auntie—"

"You come now." Auntie Vi turned and left.

Kate stood staring at the door.

"Kate?" he said.

She turned her head, and what he saw on her face made him say, "Are you okay?"

She took her time answering, and when she did, her voice was devoid of feeling. "No," she said. "I'm not okay." She looked at him, mournful, miserable. Resigned.

"I'm an elder."

She looked again at the door. Her shoulders squared, and one foot moved out, followed by the other, slowly and very carefully gathering forward momentum.

It was like watching the march of the dead.

Which perhaps it was, and not only in honor of the death of the elder just passed.

Jim stared at the empty doorway until he heard Kate's pickup start and drive away.

FIFTEEN

The Roadhouse was packed to the rafters the next Saturday night. Billy Mike's potlatch at the gym had been the usual alcohol-free zone, and more than one Park rat felt the need for their anesthetic of choice after six hours of listening to everyone from the lieutenant governor to Senator Pete Heiman to Billy's wife, Annie, tell Billy stories. The food had been worth it, though, folding tables had literally groaned beneath the moose pot roasts and the salmon piroque and the hundred loaves of banana bread.

Kate resisted every effort made to push her to the microphone, and they were numerous, instead constituting herself an aide de camp to the four aunties, who were busy ladling out plates of food. But when the line eased off, she was dispatched forthwith to help Annie hand out gifts, beaded earrings Annie had made herself, boxes of food for elders, gift certificates to Costco for parents with children, gift certificates to Chugach Air Service for the young unmarried adults. Visiting dignitaries got soapstone carvings made by Tom Shugak, Niniltna's resident artist. The caliber of the gifts given at a potlatch indicated the status of the dead, and Annie appeared to be determined that no one would have cause to criticize her husband's standing in his tribe. Kate just hoped she wasn't going to bankrupt herself. She had one more child to raise, after all.

For her part, Annie was acting less like a bereaved widow and more like an auntie in training. With the giving of every gift, she drew Kate into the conversation, making her known where she wasn't, although that didn't happen often, and where she was known making it clear that Kate had all her confidence. Kate, about as uncomfortable as she'd ever been in her life, came very close to legging it out the back door, and was thwarted only by the collectively formidable glare of the aunties, a phalanx of woman warriors that would have put the Amazons to shame. Mutt, too, was never very far from her side, displaying a positive genius for being in the way whenever Kate even thought about making a move.

It was with heartfelt relief that Kate saw the last guest out the gym door, and she managed to time the last load of trash out to the Dumpster with the arrival of Jim in her truck, which she had left at the post that morning when the aunties en masse had picked her up. She swung the bag into the trash and vaulted into the driver's seat in one movement, Jim sliding over just in time, Mutt taking Kate and the steering wheel in one leap to land foursquare in his lap. He didn't scream out loud but it was a near thing.

Kate slammed the door and the truck into gear with one movement, and the tires spit gravel against the wall of the gym. "Where's Johnny?"

"With Van and the rest of the kids at the Mikes' house. He told me to tell you he was going to spend the night."

They bounced down the hill toward town. Kate made as if to take the turn for home when Jim shoved Mutt's head out of the way to say, "I passed Harvey Meganack on the way up. He took the turn for the Ahtna road."

She slammed on the brakes and they lurched to a halt. Even Kate, no coward, quailed at the prospect of one of the four remaining members of the Niniltna Native Association camped out on her doorstep, lying in wait. She couldn't avoid them forever, she knew that perfectly well, but it had been a very long day. "I don't have any beer at the house."

This was something of a non sequitur. Kate never had liquor of any kind at the house unless Jim brought it in. "Shame," Jim said. "I could really use a beer. Why don't we go out to the Road-house?"

Kate put the truck in gear again. "Sounds like a plan." On the other side of Niniltna, Jim said, "Did you get anything to eat?"

She hadn't, and her stomach took this opportunity to say so. "I bet Dinah's got some of this winter's caribou left." The bed of the pickup slid sideways as Kate took the turn down the road that led over Squaw Candy Creek.

We
're
getting
awful
goddamn
good
at
potlatches,"
Bobby
said glumly.

"I'll miss him," Dinah said. "Billy. You know how Alaskans are. If you weren't born here, there are people who will never remember your name, even if you've been introduced to them nine times already. Whenever there was something or someone I wanted to shoot, Billy was always ready to pave the way."

"Billy knew," Kate said, looking up from her plate. "Billy knew that there's a way of life going on in rural Alaska right now that isn't going to survive the people living it. He could never get the board to agree to hire someone to come in and start taping elder stories, and then you appeared. Billy thought you were an answer to a personal prayer."

"It's going to be tough for Annie," Jim said. "Raising that baby on her own."

"And what'll happen to the board?" Bobby said. "Who takes over as chairman?"

They all looked at Kate. She shrugged and looked back down at her plate.

"Don't you like the steaks, Kate?" Dinah said.

"No, they're great," Kate said, taking a bite to prove it.

Jim, watching her, said nothing.

He was still doing his best to forget about Louis Deem's murder and his part in it. Kate hadn't raised the subject again, for which he was profoundly thankful.

He still didn't know what to do about Willard. He could question him, try to find out if Willard knew what Louis had done with the gold and the slips of paper, but he knew from experience just how short-term Willard's memory was. And what would finding the gold prove if Willard didn't remember stealing it?

Jim could just imagine the expression on Judge Singh's face if he tried to get a warrant for Willard's arrest out of a second lineup, even if Johnny could persuade himself that it was Willard he'd seen in Bernie's house that night and not Louis Deem at all.

And then there was Kate. He cast a covert glance her way. She looked solemn, and remote, and a little sad. Probably thinking about Billy. Probably thinking about the vacancy his death had left on the Association's board of directors. One of the aunties had been out to the house every day since Billy's death. It was almost as if they were making sure Kate was still there, in the Park.

What would happen if he didn't tell her about Willard? Was he really prepared to keep that secret from Kate? For how long? It wasn't as if a state trooper didn't know how to keep his mouth shut—hell, any cop worthy of the name could medal in it.

Kate had a natural ability to ferret out secrets, one of the reasons she'd been such an asset to the DA's office. What if she found out on her own? Would she ever trust him again? He remembered the scene with Dan O'Brien and winced inwardly.

"Been out to see the Smiths lately?" Bobby said.

"Huh? Oh." Jim shook his head. "Not since Abigail recanted Deem's alibi. Not much point, now that he's dead."

"They've got the roof finished, and they're installing the windows and doors."

"Does anyone in that family have a job?" Dinah said. "How are they paying for all those building materials?"

"Dan O'Brien thinks they're panning gold out of Salmon Creek and selling it in Anchorage." Bobby saw Jim's expression. "What?"

"Nothing." He ate another bite. "Everybody lies," he said.

"What?"

"Everybody lies," he repeated. He looked at Kate and smiled. "Except you."

Kate had been watching Katya make snowballs out of her mashed potatoes and hook them into the kitchen sink with a consistent three-point precision that would have made Magic Johnson sit up. Her thoughts were far away.

Jim had asked about Louis Deem's tooth on the way home from Ahtna. She hadn't told him then, and she wasn't going to tell him now.

The first month after she'd come home from Anchorage, with the scar on her throat still red and her nerves still raw, Ekaterina had come to the homestead and asked her to talk to Evelyn, one of the Topkok girls, barely eighteen. Louis Deem was between wives at the time and Evelyn, a lovely young girl and the daughter of one of the most successful salmon fishermen in Cordova, had unfortunately wandered into range.

Her parents had tried to end the relationship by sending Evelyn to Ahtna to stay with her older sister. Louis had been visiting her there on the sly, but of course Ekaterina had learned of it five minutes after their first meeting.

Evelyn's sister was a very silly woman who appeared to view Louis and Evelyn as a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Far from discouraging Louis, she gave him the run of her home. Her husband, the produce manager at the local Eagle store, was gone a lot.