A grave denied (35 page)

“I’m still here,” Jeffrey Clark said.

“I see that,” Bobby said. “Go home, Jeffie. Just go the hell on home.”

The ugly brother’s face hardened into a stubbornness whose implacability could only be mirrored on the face he was currently staring into.

“Would you like to stay to dinner, Jeffrey?” Dinah said cheerfully.

Bobby glared at her. “No, he would not like to stay to dinner, Dinah. Jesus. Women.” He almost turned to Jeffrey for support and thought better of it just in time. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” he told his brother.

Jeffrey looked over Bobby’s head and met Dinah’s eyes straight on for the first time. “I’d love to stay to dinner,” he said.

It was an interesting evening, Vanessa thought later, as she washed and Johnny dried. Jeffrey was determined to be pleasant and Bobby was determined to be obnoxious. They were both successful. Dinah kept the pork chops and applesauce and mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables moving briskly around the table, as if she thought that if she kept people’s mouths filled they wouldn’t be able to spew venom at each other. She was only partially successful, hampered by having to feed Katya at the same time. Johnny had grabbed the seat next to Vanessa, and partway through the meal she felt his foot sidle up to hers. He’d looked at her sideways and given her a small smile. She’d smiled back, a little shy.

When the last fork was dry, Vanessa hung up the dish towel and said to Johnny, “I really better get home.”

“I know.” He looked toward the door.

“What?” she said.

He hesitated. “I’m just wondering about Jim. You know, the trooper. What he’s doing.”

She was silent for a moment. “Was it awful?” she said. “The body?”

His lips compressed into a thin line. “It was awful,” he said. “I hope you never have to see anything like that.” He shuddered. “I hope I don’t ever have to see anything like that ever again.”

“What will the trooper do?”

“He’ll find the murderer,” Johnny said sturdily.

“But he’s killed two people now, and the trooper didn’t find him after he killed the first one.”

“There’s more evidence now,” Johnny said with an authority that sacretly impressed her, which had, of course, been the point. “The killer got away with it the first time, so he got careless. He left something behind that’ll help Jim catch him, you watch.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.” He smiled at her, and she was reassured.

In the living room Jeffrey had enthroned himself in the middle of the couch that had its back to the window. Katya trotted over to him with a copy of
The Monster at the End of this Book
and pushed her way onto his lap regardless of the cup of coffee and slice of lemon cake he held. “Read,” she commanded.

He looked up to find Bobby ready to explode, and the expression on his face was all too obvious. “Why, sure, sugar, I’ll read to you,” he said, his voice as smooth as honey.

Dinah put a restraining hand on Bobby’s arm, a gesture she had perfected during the evening, and indeed during the past week. “She’s going to go right off,” she whispered, and sure enough, Katya was asleep long before Jeffrey got to the monster. Sleeping babies gain ten degrees in body temperature and ten pounds in body weight, and it was amusing to watch Jeffrey cope with both. Amusing for a while, anyway, and Dinah went to rescue Katya before she slid completely out of her uncle’s arms.

Jeffrey thanked her for the meal, said to Bobby, “I’ll be back in the morning,” accepted a terse “Don’t bother” in reply with seeming equanimity, and took his leave.

Bobby blew out a breath and let loose with a colorful commentary on Jeffrey, Dinah, dinner, and life in general. It was a restrained performance, for Bobby, and it didn’t wake up Katya, so Dinah let it go. She sat down next to him on the sofa and he pulled her to him in a tight embrace. “I wish he’d go home,” he said. “Just go on home.”

“He’s a man on a mission,” Dinah said.

He was silent for a moment, unusual for Bobby. “Dandy keeps wandering into my mind,” he said, surprising her.

“Mine, too,” she said, looking over her shoulder. Johnny and Vanessa were engaged in a whispered conversation next to the sink.

“Worthless bastard,” Bobby said.

“Harmless, though,” Dinah said.

“Somebody didn’t think so,” Bobby said. He kissed her suddenly, hard enough to hurt her lip.

“Ouch,” she said mildly when free again.

Her husband’s hands roamed, touching, fondling, caressing, possessing. “He was only ever interested in one thing. If he was going to get shot by an irate husband, it would have happened years ago.”

“I don’t think Jim thinks it was an irate husband. I think he thinks it was the same person who killed Len Dreyer.”

Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “Dreyer I could see killing, now that we know who he was and what he did. But Dandy?”

“He must have gotten close to Dreyer’s murderer.”

Bobby looked skeptical. “I wouldn’t have thought he was that bright.”

“I’m going to take Vanessa home now,” Johnny announced, standing a safe distance away from the living room. After six months in the Park he’d had experience of the Clarks’ lack of inhibitions, and he’d seen enough to horrify him for one day.

“Thanks for dinner, Mrs. Clark,” Vanessa said. “And Mr. Clark.”

Dinah disentangled herself from her husband and stood up. “Come back anytime, honey. Johnny? You got everything? Helmets?” She looked out the window. The sun was a long way from going down. “You guys watch for bears, now.” She recollected that there appeared to be a madman with a shotgun loose in the Park and said, brows creased, “Maybe you better follow them home, Bobby.”

“I’ll take ‘em,” Jim said, standing in the doorway.

He had his cap pulled so low it was hard to see his expression, but there was a harsh line to his mouth.

“You told them,” Dinah said.

He gave a sharp nod.

“I’ll go over.”

He made a negating motion with his hand. “Don’t. I sent Auntie Vi up to their house. She’s calling their kids. I sent George into town with the body, so the kids in Anchorage can meet the plane and at least some of them can fly back out with him. They don’t want to see anyone but family, not yet.”

“All right. Have you had anything to eat? There are leftover pork chops, and a little mashed potatoes.”

“Anything’s fine.”

Dinah fixed him a plate. He ate standing up. “Thanks, Dinah.”

As if she couldn’t restrain herself one moment longer, Dinah turned and went straight for Katya’s crib. Bobby followed her.

“Come on,” Jim said to Johnny. “Kate at home?”

“She was when I left this morning. I have to take Vanessa home first.”

Jim nodded. “I’ll follow you.”

₁₈

His teeth were clenched so tightly together he was starting to get a headache. He made a conscious effort to unclamp them but it was like chipping at cement. There had never been any question of what Jim Chopin would do with his life. He couldn’t remember a time when he had wanted to be anything else but a cop. The job had never let him down, either; it kept him busy, interested and amused, and the Smoky the Bear hat was an unbelievable babe magnet. There were those times when he had to look at men he had known when they were alive, dead men now, dead men who’d been shot, stabbed, beaten, messed about by animals even, but he could handle that. He could handle the occasional drunken pipe-liner putting a gun to his head at Bernie’s Roadhouse; he could handle a twenty-car pileup with jackknifed semis at Glenallen the day of the first snowfall; he could handle abusive fathers and drunken husbands and vengeful wives and embezzling cannery owners and dope-dealing video store rental clerks. And, hell, the pay was even good, he was putting away a hell of a chunk for retirement, always supposing he ever did retire.

The times he did think about retirement were when he was walking up to the front door of someone’s home to deliver the worst possible news to the people inside. He couldn’t handle being the goddamn grim reaper, was what he couldn’t handle. Billy and Annie hadn’t believed him at first, a common reaction. He’d had to repeat himself, and then repeat himself again, and then Annie had slid down the side of the wall as if all the bones in her body had dissolved, and Billy had begun to weep.

And then he’d had to ask them when was the last time they’d seen Dandy, and who was his latest girlfriend, and had he told them anything about trying to find Len Dreyer’s killer. He hadn’t got much sense out of either one, big surprise, but he’d done his duty, by god. The academy would be proud of him; his probationary officer would have nodded approvingly; Lieutenant Gene Brooks, his boss in Anchorage, would find nothing about which to complain.

He felt his gorge rise, and for a moment thought he was going to have to pull over to puke. He fought it back, winding down the window and inhaling large gulps of cool spring air. He’d slowed down a bit and the four-wheeler ahead of him pulled away. He stepped on the gas and caught up again.

Leon Duffy aka Len Dreyer was no loss to the Park. If Dreyer’s death resulted in a open file growing steadily colder over the coming weeks and even years, that was pretty much okay with him. Duffy was a child abuser. Jim would not have connived at his murder, and he would have tried to stop it had he been present at the event, but after the fact his personal opinion was that a quick shotgun blast to the chest was far too short an ending. Something involving large amounts of pain and suffering would have been more appropriate, but at least Duffy had been removed from the general population, to its far greater good.

However. Jim had every reason to believe that the murderer had tried to burn down Kate’s cabin and Kate with it, and that was not allowed, whether he was sleeping with the prospective flambe or not.

And now Dandy. Dandy, that charmer of women, that guiltless slacker, that cop wanna-be for who knew what reason, hell, maybe he liked the hat, too. Dandy, who was just stubborn enough, just stupid enough not to back off the investigation when told to, little Dandy Mike, stumbling around the Park, poking his nose into what didn’t concern him, asking questions of all the wrong people, causing enough talk so that someone would decide to shut him up for good.

“Fuck!” Jim yelled.

He pounded on the ceiling of the cab until his knuckles split.

“Fuck!” he yelled again.

It didn’t make him feel any better.

Right now what he wanted most in the world was to talk to Kate Shugak. He was going to sit down with Kate and discuss this case from the beginning of last summer and the attack of Tracy Drussell to the discovery of Duffy’s body, the burning of Kate’s cabin, and the murder of Dandy Mike. They were going to lay out a timeline, they were going to put names and places next to the dates, and they were “fucking going to find this asshole with the shotgun and the firestarter!” he bellowed, and pounded on the ceiling again.

His knuckles hurt. He sucked on them, watching the four-wheeler ahead with a fierce gaze. No way was anything going to happen to Johnny Morgan on his watch. And the girl, what was her name? Van, Vanessa something. Right, Vanessa Cox. The Norwegian bachelor farmer’s daughter, only she wasn’t his daughter and he wasn’t a bachelor. Jim had met Virgil Hagberg at a town meeting in the high school gym once. He didn’t remember a wife, but he remembered someone saying there was one, but she seldom left the homestead.

He never should have let Dandy Mike imagine for one moment that he might have a chance at a job at the Niniltna trooper post. He never for one moment should have allowed Dandy’s father, Billy, to believe that he had influenced Jim into giving Dandy a job. There was such a thing as being too goddamn diplomatic. Screw diplomacy from now on, diplomacy got the wrong people killed.

He blinked. For one heart-stopping moment the four-wheeler disappeared, and then he drew level with the lane they had turned on and spotted the telltale dust hanging in the air. With a curse, he floored the gas pedal and dove down it after them. Tree limbs caught at the rearview mirrors and deadwood cracked beneath his tires, but he caught up with them as they pulled up to the house.

It was a nice house, trim; somebody had already raked the square patch of lawn free of dead leaves and new grass was poking its head up. The outbuildings were neat, too, well maintained, a shed for everything and everything in its shed.

Kate’s truck was parked in front of the house. Good. He’d by god hijack the woman and they’d pull an all-nighter and figure out who the murderer was. Almost calm, he pulled up on her rear bumper—just in case she had any ideas about getting away from him —and killed the engine and got out.

Johnny eyed him. “You got a lot of room to park out here, you had to park it right behind Kate’s truck?”

“Yes,” Jim said, and something in the tone of his voice shut Johnny down cold.

He was Jack Morgan’s son, though, so only for a moment. “It’s your funeral,” he said, and turned to Vanessa. He was too manly to try anything with Jim watching, but she had no such qualms. She kissed his cheek, a swift, shy gesture, and murmured something that Jim didn’t catch. Johnny blushed, and with a quick glance over his shoulder murmured something back. With a little wave, Vanessa went up the steps and in the door.