A grave denied (36 page)

Jim followed her. “Hold on,” he said before she vanished. “Find Kate for me, will you? Tell her I need to talk to her.”

She nodded. He stood in the doorway and waited.

“Hi, Aunt Telma. I’m home.”

“So I see, dear,” a pleasant voice said.

“Where’s Kate Shugak?”

“Why, I don’t know, dear. Kate who?”

“Kate Shugak, Aunt Telma. Her truck is parked out front.”

“Oh.” A brief silence. “Did I give her cookies?”

“You might have. You give everyone cookies. Was she here?”

“Someone was here.”

“When?”

“Oh, I don’t know, dear. A while ago.” A pause. “Would you like some cookies?”

“No, thank you, Aunt Telma.”

Vanessa came back down the hall. “She’s not in the kitchen or the living room.”

“Your aunt seems — ”

“Yes. She is.” Vanessa stood very straight and looked him directly in the eye.

“Yes. Well.” Jim respected loyalty, deserving or not. “Maybe Kate’s with Virgil outside somewhere. I’ll go look.” He went back outside.

“Where’s Kate?” Johnny said.

“I don’t know.” A faint unease whispered around the edges of his mind. After a moment he identified it. Where was Mutt? Generally speaking, he couldn’t set foot within a mile radius of Mutt without being instantly attacked. She never strayed far from Kate’s side, except when Kate was tucked in for the night. So where was she?

Maybe Kate had left her at home. But Kate seldom did so, and would Mutt allow that anyway? Unlikely.

Without thinking, he reached down to unsnap his holster.

Johnny’s eyes got big. “What’s wrong?”

He tried for a reassuring smile. “Nothing. Stay here, okay? In fact, get in my truck and lock the doors. If Kate or Mutt show up, beep the horn.”

“Okay.” The boy looked up at the house. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair. Ain’t love grand. Young love, anyway. Grown-up love was a colossal pain in the ass.

Jim walked around the house, not tiptoeing exactly, but not announcing his presence, either. He walked between the house and the garage, a neat pathway paved with irregular stones with a flat surface, worn by much use and bordered with neat beds of raked soil, ready for planting.

He heard a sound and followed the path to it, around a stand of paper birch and through a tiny grove of what he thought might be apple trees, although he didn’t know how fruit trees could survive either the cold or the moose in the Park.

He came out of them onto a large plot of turned earth. Virgil was digging in it with a number two shovel, taking earth from a pile of dirt and tossing it into a hole.

Jim walked forward, his footsteps muffled in the grass. “Hey, Virgil,” he said.

As uneasy as he was, he was still unprepared for the other man’s reaction.

Virgil dropped the shovel and lunged for a shotgun that Jim only just then noticed propped upright by its butt in the dirt. He tried to grab it before Virgil got hold of it, but Virgil was closer and quick for an old man. He swung it around, both barrels pointing at Jim.

There was nothing more mesmerizing in this world than the twin barrels of a .12-gauge shotgun staring down at you. Jim could hardly take his eyes off them. He kept his voice soft. “What seems to be the problem here, Virgil?”

Virgil squinted at him. His thin cheeks were sunken, his eyes hollow. “Jim Chopin?” The shotgun began to lower.

“That’s right,” Jim said, risking a step forward and halting when the barrel jerked back up again. He grabbed a quick look over Virgil’s shoulder and what he thought he saw made his blood run cold. “Virgil,” he said urgently, “put the gun down. Now.”

Virgil shook his head. “I am very sorry to disobey an officer of the law, but I cannot to do that, Jim Chopin. My Telma, she would not like that.”

“Put it down, Virgil.” Jim saw Virgil’s knuckle tighten on the trigger and felt sweat pop out on his forehead. “At least tell me why,” he said. “Why, Virgil?”

Virgil looked behind Jim, and Jim dared a glance backward. Virgil was looking at the house, at the second floor, where the light was on and a woman, Jim guessed Telma, was brushing her hair. “Because, Jim Chopin, love doth make fools of us all.” And he fired.

Involuntarily Jim closed his eyes.

There was no blast.

He opened his eyes again.

Virgil fired the other barrel. Jim flinched, but again no shot.

The shotgun was empty.

Virgil sighed. “I guess I forgot to reload.”

Jim had the shotgun out of his hands and Virgil on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back in thirty seconds. In the next second he was up and running for the hole in the garden. “Oh god,” he said in an agonized whisper, “no, no, no, no.”

He stumbled into the hole and began digging at the dirt with both hands. Flesh and fur both showed. His heart was beating so hard in his ears that he couldn’t hear and he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. “No,” was all he could say, over and over again, “no, no no no.”

He got Kate out first, so covered in dirt and blood he hardly recognized her. He shoved her out of the pit and scrambled up beside her. She was warm to the touch, thank god she was warm. He put his ear to her mouth and remembered to count to five. Nothing. He beat back panic and tried for a pulse in her neck, forced himself to count off ten seconds. Nothing.

“No,”
he said. He forced his thumbs into her cheeks, opening her mouth, and sucked out the dirt and spat, once, twice. He pulled her head back to create an airway and started CPR. Fifteen and two, fifteen and two, fifteen and two. Not too hard, don’t want to break any ribs. Get air into the lungs, into the brain. Fifteen and two, fifteen and two, fifteen and two.

He looked up once and saw Johnny standing in front of them, a stricken look on his face. “Get Mutt,” he said, jerking his head, and went back to breathing for Kate.

He seemed to have been doing CPR forever, he had nearly given up hope, when her breast rose and fell on its own. She choked, and then she coughed, and then she puked, a gory mass of coffee and cookie chunk with plenty of dirt in it. He turned her to her side and then he puked, too, right next to her, on his hands and knees like a dog.

Like a dog. He turned and saw that Johnny had somehow managed to muscle Mutt out of the pit. She looked as bad as Kate did, but she was breathing on her own. “Stay with them,” Jim said, and got to his feet.

The boy, dumb, kneeled between woman and dog, his face wet with tears, as Jim jumped over Virgil and ran for the crew cab.

“Why?” Jim said. He was too tired and too angry for subtlety. If Virgil gave him the slightest excuse, he was going to knock him flat on his back. He didn’t care that Virgil was twenty years older than he was. He didn’t care that Virgil was seated, with his wrists cuffed. He was tired from being up all night and if Virgil didn’t answer all of his questions straight out and straight up, he might kill him and use the hole Virgil had dug for Kate and Mutt to bury the body.

“So fuck diplomacy, and fuck technique,” he said out loud, earning a curious glance from Bobby.

They were in the conference room at the Niniltna Native Association. Bobby had gotten the keys from Auntie Vi, who had gotten them from Billy Mike, and Jim was in mortal fear that Billy and Annie were going to show up at any moment, another of the reasons he wanted this interview in the bag.

Kate and Mutt were in the back of George’s Cessna on their way to Ahtna. Bobby had already alerted the hospital and the vet. They were both suffering from severe head trauma, resulting from a single blow to the head. Jim had the shovel in the back of the crew cab. It wasn’t the blood on the shovel that got to him, it was the short, silky black hairs. He’d almost used it on Virgil then and there.

“Why did you kill them?” he said. “I want answers, Virgil, and I want them now.”

Virgil looked as serene as ever. No force had been necessary in subduing him. “I have to get back to Telma now, she will be worried.”

Jim noticed Virgil wasn’t worried about Vanessa, shell-shocked and speechless, currently in the capable hands of Auntie Vi. “You should have thought of that before you killed two people and tried to kill a third. To say nothing of the dog.” Jim caught himself choking back a laugh. He wondered if he was hysterical. He knew the signs. He took a deep breath. “Let’s take it from the top, Virgil. Why did you kill Len Dreyer?”

Virgil focused on him and said gently, “Would you please see to my Telma, Jim Chopin? She should not be left alone, way out there by herself.”

“I’ll get hold of Bernie,” Bobby said. “He’ll find the Grosdidier brothers, send them out after her. We’ll bring her back to town, Virgil, and I’ll have Auntie Vi look after her. She’ll be all right.”

“I thank you, Bobby,” Virgil said, smiling at him.

“You’re welcome,” Bobby said.
“Now fucking answer Jim’s questions!”

Virgil’s smile didn’t falter. He looked at Jim.

Jim sat down across the table from him. “Why did you kill Len Dreyer?”

“Because he found them,” Virgil said simply.

“Found who?” Jim said.

“The babies.”

“What babies?” Jim looked at Bobby, who pointed a finger at his ear and made a circle.

“Our babies,” Virgil said, closing his eyes, his voice dreamy. “Four boys, and a little girl.”

Jim took a deep breath, let it out. “You don’t have any children, Virgil.”

Virgil opened his eyes. “No,” he said. “None living. It is the sickness, you see.”

“The what?”

“After the babies are born. Telma…” Virgil’s face creased with sorrow. “I would try to watch, to keep them safe. But I am only one man, and I must work to make our living, so we do not go hungry, so we have a roof over our heads and clothes to wear upon our backs. I would have to go out, to do these things, and when I would come back…” He made a helpless gesture. “They would be dead.”

Jim stared at him incredulously. He felt rather than saw Bobby’s jaw drop. “Are you telling me that you and your wife had five children, and that Telma murdered every one of them?”

“Not murdered,” Virgil said vehemently. “She loves the children, does my Telma. She loves the babies. I read up on this, I know what I am talking about. It is the sickness that mothers sometimes get after the birth of their babies. It makes the mothers do strange things.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bobby said blankly.

Virgil smiled, misty-eyed. “My Telma, she is so beautiful when the babies are born. She holds them close to her. She will not let go.”

“She smothered them?” Jim said. He’d heard of similar cases, but five?

“She loved them!” Virgil said. “She loved them,” he said in a quieter voice.

“And after she killed them, you buried them on the homestead,” Jim said.

“I bury them,” Virgil said, nodding. “I make their little coffins—so tiny, they are —and I dress them in the white clothes that Telma has made for them, the little innocents. They are so sweet, our babies.”

“Five? You buried five babies?” Jim said. “For crissake, Virgil, why didn’t you try to get Telma some help after the first one?”

Virgil looked at him, surprised. “They would have taken her from me, my beautiful Telma,” he said in a gentle voice, as if explaining the matter to a child. “I cannot live without my Telma, Jim Chopin.”

“You’ll have to learn how now,” Bobby said.

“Why did you kill Len Dreyer, Virgil?” Jim said, although he thought he already knew.

Virgil’s words confirmed his suspicion. “I hire him to rototill my garden in May, but he does not dig where I tell him to.”

“He dug up the bodies instead.”

Virgil nodded. “My babies,” he said sadly, “he digs up our babies. I do not know this at first, of course, only when he comes back the next month, when I have hired him and Dandy Mike to build my greenhouse.”

His face darkened. “And then this Len Dreyer asks me for money, and I know if I do not give it to him that he will tell. He comes back every month for the money. I wait until fall, when the snow is going to fall and keep everyone home so they won’t see me, and when he comes in October—”

“You shoot him with your shotgun,” Jim said. “And then you took his body up to the glacier because you’d heard it was advancing and you figured his body would never be found.”

Virgil shrugged. “And if it were, it would be a long time, and nothing to do with me.”

“And then,” Jim said grimly, “I had the brilliant idea of hiring Kate Shugak to ask around about him. And that frightened you.”

“My Telma was upset when she came to the house, asking after Len Dreyer,” Virgil said.

“So you set fire to her cabin,” Jim said. Bobby, his face dark and his eyes narrow, sat next to him, simmering with a palpable rage.

“I set fire to her cabin,” Virgil said. “But she does not die. And then I think I should leave it alone, that Dreyer is dead, that there is nothing to connect him to me, that if I say nothing no one ever will, and me and my Telma will be left alone.”

“What about Dandy Mike?” Jim said tightly. “Why did you have to kill him?”