Fatal Thaw (5 page)

"Another new experience for you," Jack couldn't resist saying.

Again, Chopper Jim surprised him. He gave Jack a crooked smile. "Sure as hell was. Sure doesn't happen to me a whole hell of a lot." Jack thought about it. "She say why?" The trooper shook his head.

"You didn't ask?"

The trooper shook his head more definitely this time. "There was no point. She was a very . . ." he cast about him for exactly the right words, and settled somewhat lamely on " . . . independent person. When she did something, she had her own reasons for it, and she didn't believe in wasting time explaining to whoever couldn't keep up."

"Another guy, you figure?"

"That's the obvious, most likely reason, I know. But with Lisa. .

." "What?"

The trooper shrugged. "Lisa Getty was a lot of things. `Obvious' wasn't one of them. She was a complicated lady."

"Just because she dumped you?"

For the third time Jim Chopin surprised Jack Morgan. He gave the question a detached sort of consideration.

When it came, his answer was without emotion, given, indeed, with the dispassion of the trained investigator. He shook his head, back and forth once, decisively. "No. We were about as close physically as you can get, but .. "But what?"

"But what." Jim studied his hat as if the answer were written under the brim. "She had this ability, this talent." Jack raised his eyebrows a little over that. "Talent for what?" "I don't know exactly what to call it. A talent. for concentration, I guess. Maybe, compartmentalization?" "Whoa."

"I told you, I don't know exactly what to call it. All I know is she had the ability to shut down the rest of her life while she was concentrating on one specific part." Chopper Jim fidgeted a little. Jack had never seen him fidget before, and he had to admit to himself that he enjoyed it.

"When we were together, she concentrated on me, on us, on what we were doing. It was pretty ..." "Intense?" Jack suggested with a straight face.

Fidget, maybe, but nobody'd been able to embarrass Chopper Jim since the age of six. "I guess that's as good a word as any. It was only after it was over that I realized that, however intense it had been, I never did get to know her all that well."

"Great." "Yeah," Chopper Jim said. "I know. I don't know if I should have tried to know her better, or never started up with her at all."

"It'd make this job that much easier if you had tried to know her better," Jack observed somewhat sourly. Chopper Jim shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

Confidences concerning his personal life were clearly at an end.

"What're we going to do about this?" Chopper Jim shrugged again. "If you can't go in, who're we going to send? No one knows the Park better than you."

"Oh, I don't know." Chopper Jim was readjusting the crease in the crown of his hat with a delicate precision Bill admired. "I'm sure you'll find someone capable of doing the job." He made a minute alteration to the twin tassels at the end of the gold cord encircling the brim. "Better be careful. You know how they are in the Park about protecting one of their own."

Jack thought back to the previous December and couldn't suppress an inner shiver. "Yes. I know. So?" The trooper set his hat on his head, tilting the brim so that it came down low over his eyes. He looked up, his expression somewhere between rueful and resigned. "So. Looks like Kate's all we got."

"Looks like." Jack made a pretense of straightening a pile of paper on his desk.

"When you going in? Tomorrow?"

"No." Jack thought. "I'll have the team go over the ground one more time and bag everything that doesn't actually move out of the way. And I think I might have ballistics run the bullets through CLIS." He raised a hand in the face of Bill's unspoken protest. "I know, I know, but with Kate Shugak you want to make sure."

"Make sure of what?" Bill asked.

"Make sure there's no way she can back out of it," the trooper said shrewdly.

Jack's thick black eyebrows twitched together but he didn't rise to the bait. "I know a guy, Gamble, on the FBI. He owes me. He'll get them through the data base and get me a printout on the rifling characteristics pronto. I should be able to go into the Park on," he leaned forward to flip through his desk calendar, "at the latest, Sunday."

"Want a lift?" Chopper Jim said.

Jack shook his head. "I'll fly in myself."

Kate. His spirits rose. He was going home, to Kate, when he hadn't thought he would see her again until his vacation in May. His heart actually skipped a beat, and he couldn't keep the smile from forming. He looked from Bill's curious and slightly disapproving expression to the trooper's knowing one and laughed out loud.

KATE was replacing the window Mutt had charged through to her rescue nine days before. The sky was clear and calm, the sun warm on her back, the temperature above freezing and the task simple and straightforward, occupying her hands while letting her mind wander. That was the problem.

"Yes," she said, "there is something about apprehending murderers in mid-massacre that tends to take the edge off of spring fever."

Saying it out loud didn't help as much as she had thought it might.

Grunting, she lifted the window in its prefab aluminum frame and settled it into the wall of the cabin. Through the glass Mutt looked at her pleadingly. Kate fumbled in her pocket for screws and began to set them in, one at a time, concentrating with a kind of stubborn determination.

The horror of the scene on the road dogged her heels like a shadow, always on the periphery of her consciousness. It tarnished the promise of the early spring days and poisoned her dreams.

Across the clearing there was a rustle of brush and she looked around to see Mutt's boyfriend springing to his feet and looking up in the sky to the west. Kate paused and cocked her head. A faint buzz sounded the approach of an airplane. The noise became louder and lower, and she whipped her head around just in time to see a blue, black and silver Cessna 172 roar over the clearing, the gear skimming the tops of the trees. A full-throated baritone made itself heard above the engine, belting out a song about dames and how there was nothing like them.

She started to smile. The Cessna came around for a second pass and another verse. She was grinning as she grabbed her parka and ran for the garage, an indignant and frustrated Mutt yelping from the cabin. As she rolled the snow machine outside, the Cessna roared overhead for the third time and the chorus. The Super Jag unaccountably started at first try. Kate hit the throttle and roared out of the garage without stopping to close the door behind her, past the mystified wolf crouching beneath the hemlock tree and up the path to the road, without a glance or a thought to spare for anything but how fast she could make the twenty-five miles to Niniltna.

He should have been on the ground long since, but when Kate got to the airstrip he was still circling the field and continuing to sing out of the Cessna's open window. As a dozen friends and relatives were later delighted to inform her, in the interim he had made a couple of low runs over the town itself and one foray out to the Roadhouse, serenading all who passed beneath his wings. The two tribal policemen on duty that day gaped up at him from one end of the runway, so struck by this spirited rendition of Rogers and Hammerstein that they didn't bother to turn as Kate came up behind them.

As soon as he saw the Jag emerge out onto the open snow at the head of the strip the pilot banked and sideslipped into a landing, rolling out to within ten feet of her and swinging the tail around with a flourish before killing the engine. He was out of the Cessna before it stopped moving and strode past the tribal police to swoop down on Kate. She was proud she didn't squeal.

"Jack?" Pete Kvasnikof cleared his throat. He shuffled his feet. "Jack?"

He cleared his throat again. Finally he set his rifle butt down in the snow and reached his free hand to tap timidly at the big man's shoulder.

"Uh, Jack?"

Jack pulled back from Kate and looked down at her flushed face with satisfaction. He growled once, low in his throat. "Jesus, Jack," Pete said, hoping he wasn't blushing himself, "Kate oughta put you on a leash."

Jack turned, arm firm around Kate's shoulders, and appeared to see Pete for the first time. "Oh hi, Pete. Go ahead, search the plane."

"Gotta pat you down, too," Pete said awkwardly. "Sure, sure, I know the drill." Jack stood, arms stretched out at shoulder height, one eye on Kate to make sure she didn't step out of reach.

"Okay," Pete said, stepping back. "You're clean." Another man came panting up. "No booze in the plane, either."

"Who're you?"

"Jack Morgan, Tom Will. He's a new hire."

"Glad to meet you." Jack gave Tom's hand a brisk shake and as a continuation of the same movement turned to steer Kate toward the Super Jag. "See you later, boys."

The sound of the snow machine's engine starting drowned out Will's reply.

Kate barely had the door open when Mutt crashed out between them and tore into the woods.

"Mutt!" Kate yelled. "Come back here!"

Jack took her arm and pulled her inside. "Jack," Kate said, trying to twist free, "let me go. I've got to go get her. Jack! She's in heat, dammit."

"So am I." Jack kicked the door closed behind him. A second later Kate was flat on her back in the middle of the floor, a trail of discarded clothing between her and the door and a large, warm man sprawled on top of her. With tender lips and gentle bites he traced the scar that twisted around her throat like knotted twine. She squirmed a little beneath the tickling sensation. "You shaved," she murmured, nuzzling him. "How come?" He bit her to get her attention and she forgot what she had been going to say next.

The afternoon and evening passed too quickly, in laughter and loving and a midnight raid on the kitchen. Jack woke before her the next morning and lay quietly, watching her. Asleep, her face held a kind of stubborn concentration that made him smile, and sigh. Her skin was smooth and gold. Her eyes, with just the hint of an epicanthic fold, when open were large and a light, clear brown and tilted upward toward her temples. Her hair fell straight and all one length to her waist, with no hint of wave or curl, as black as a shadow at midnight and as soft as silk.

Awake and in motion, she was short without being stocky, lithe without effort and beautiful without trying, at least in his eyes. He touched her, and she woke as she always did, at once and immediately aware of herself and her surroundings. She smiled at him, a wide, irresistible smile, and he leaned down into it and into a kiss that ended some time later less gently than it began but all the more satisfactorily for that.

She went back to sleep afterward. He rose and dressed and went downstairs to pump up water to wash and make coffee.

She woke up an hour later, feeling gratifyingly used in various places but not near as used up as she had been. She smelled coffee and smiled.

Dressing quickly in jeans, sweatshirt and thick socks, she swung herself onto the ladder and slid down, letting the uprights slip between her feet and hands. She hopped the last few feet and turned with a cocky smile.

He was seated at the table, wearing businesslike horn rimmed glasses and surrounded by a dozen bulging manila file folders. Her smile faded.

"Coffee's on," he said without looking up, "and I sliced some bread."

He had his work face on. Curious, she hesitated for a moment, but she could tell he wanted her to ask, so she turned and headed outside. There was no sign of Mutt. She called and waited, called again. Still no response, and Kate swore beneath her breath, used the outhouse and returned to the cabin.

She poured coffee, piled a saucer high with bread and carried both to the table. Jack gathered his files together in a bulky pile and shoved them to one side. He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and thought how to put it for maximum effect. In the end, bluntness won out.

"Roger McAniff didn't kill Lisa Getty."

Kate's hand stilled on the butter knife. She sat looking down at the slice of bread as if she'd never seen white flour, water and yeast mixed together before in her life. When she raised her head, Jack smiled inwardly. "What did you say?"

"Ballistics says the bullet that killed Lisa Getty came from a different rifle than the bullets that killed the other victims."

She looked at him steadily. "Different rifle." "Yup.

"Different shooter?" "Looks like."

She put down the butter knife, balancing it just so on the saucer. When she put down the bread he knew he had her. Not much got between Kate and food.

"Before you ask, we double-checked for errors. I even had Gamble run the printouts on the rifle through the CLIS data base. Same answer, three times."

"Gamble," she said. "The suit you brought in last year?" "Uh-huh." He indicated the files that littered the top of the table. "Want to take a look?"

"No." She picked up her bread, spread it with salmon berry jelly and took a big bite. The words muffled, she added, "But I will."

After breakfast, she retired to the couch with the files and read steadily through the afternoon. At about three o'clock she put down the one she was reading and went outside. She climbed the ladder to the cache and rooted around. There were two small packages of caribou steaks and a moose roast, all that was left of her winter meat supply. She brought it all down. It was still freezing at night, but the days were warm enough now that the meat would soon spoil. "Mutt!" she called. "You horny bitch, get your hot behind home! Now!" There was no reply. She hadn't really expected one. There were legends about timber wolves and their stamina. Kate didn't know whether to laugh or swear. In the end, she did both. "Oh hell. Enjoy it while you can, girl."

Inside, she chopped all three packages into stew meat. Lighting the propane cooker, she put her biggest stew pot over the flame and into it sliced a can of bacon and the two largest onions she could find in the root cellar in back of the barn. Mincing a couple of large cloves of garlic, she stirred them into the bacon and onions. The smell made her stomach growl. Adding the meat and dried herbs she Sautéed the mixture until it was brown. She found some celery that wasn't too withered and some carrots in excellent shape. She produced a couple of cans of stewed tomatoes and tossed those in, too, filled one of the empties with water and added it, thought it over and added two more. The liquid in the pot barely covered The ingredients. She cleaned the kitchen, waiting for the pot to boil, and when it did added a couple of cups of macaroni, covered the pot and turned down the heat. She'd brought another loaf of bread with her from the cache, and she left that out on the counter, still wrapped in tin foil.