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Did you manage to scare up Duffy’s arresting officer?“ Brendan was a big-bellied man with thinning red hair he didn’t bother to coerce into a comb-over. Shrewd blue eyes looked out over a fleshy nose and a mouth that was always kicked up on one side in something between a sneer and a smile, kind of like Elvis, only with more charm. His suit was rumpled, his loosened tie stained with what might have been breakfast, and his enormous feet, crossed on the desk between them, were clad in a pair of waffle-soled, lace-up leather boots that looked suitable for climbing Denali, if they’d had any heel left to them.

By contrast, his office was neat to the point of making your teeth ache. This was an office that would not tolerate any document misfiled, any folder mislabeled, any filing cabinet overcrowded. There wasn’t so much as a speck of dust on any horizontal surface, and Kate got the feeling that if Brendan had the temerity to track mud into the room that a broom and a mop would follow immediately on his heels. His pencils were razor sharp, none of his pens were out of ink, and his telephone sat at a precise angle from his computer, with the fax, printer, and PDA cradle lined up like soldiers next to it. “Got a new secretary, Brendan,” Kate said, and it wasn’t a question.

He nodded, his expression of woe belied by the look of relief Kate glimpsed in his eyes. “Yeah, Janice, you saw her on the way in. I live in fear. About the arresting officer.”

Kate didn’t like the expression on his face. “What?”

“Well, he’s kind of not around.”

“Define not around. Is he retired?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh, hell. Is he dead?”

“Might as well be.”

“Brandon.”

He flapped a hand. “Okay, all right. He’s at Highland Mountain.”

Kate’s brows knit. “You mean he’s a corrections officer now?”

“No, I mean he’s an inmate.”

“Oh, please. Say you’re joking.”

“Nope. He got fired from the force a while back.”

“What for?”

“Making dirty movies with underage victims recruited from his case files.”

“Ick,” Johnny said.

“You said it, kid,” Brendan said. “Still, I don’t think we would have nailed him if he hadn’t been selling tapes off the Internet from his office computer.” He looked at Kate. “You know how it is sometimes. He was on the job too long, in sex crimes too long. Damn few can take it for more than five, six years. The smart ones get out before it gets to them.”

Kate rubbed her hands over her face. “Oh, crap. Not only have I got a body that’s six months old, now I’ve got an unreported child abuse and a cop in jail. This case just keeps getting better and better.”

Brendan sat up, his lips pursed together in a silent whistle. “Oh. Don’t believe I’d heard that. Okay, that’s makes for a horse of a different color. How may I help you, Kate?”

For a fat man, Brendan McCord sure moved quick, Johnny thought. Observing the tight, even expression on the big face across from him, of the leashed power and authority that the big body radiated, Johnny also thought it might be a good idea to get on and stay on Brandon’s good side. Like, for life.

“Can I talk to the officer?”

“I already did, made a phone call this morning. He says the girl was fortunate in her choice of relatives.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She was Harold Elwell Bannister’s granddaughter. You never heard me say that, of course, the record is naturally sealed as she was a juvenile.”

“Oh.” Harold Elwell Bannister was an old-time Alaskan, a stampeder who had stayed on after the gold rush to found a chain of grocery stores and subsequently to guide the footsteps of first territorial and then state governors. The Bannisters were a wealthy and historic Alaskan family, and Kate doubted there was a cop or a prosecutor, or more importantly a judge, in the state who wouldn’t have done their utmost to see that a crime against any relative of his did not go unavenged. “I see.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t like there was any doubt, though. There was semen residue, and they tested it for blood type. And there was an eyewitness who saw him make the snatch. She was out walking her dog. She was eighty-three and you know how dark it is winter mornings, but she ID’d him in a lineup. Girl was waiting for the school bus. Duffy had staked her out, and grabbed her up the one morning she was standing there alone.”

“Did he admit that?”

“Not to staking her out, but the cop is pretty sure that’s what happened. Still, the prosecutor had to fight for it, blood tests back then were pre-DNA, there was plenty of room for the defense to maneuver, and our eighty-three-year-old witness wore Coke-bottle glasses and failed to identify her own daughter in the courtroom.”

“But Duffy was found guilty anyway.”

Brendan shrugged and grinned. “The judge was a regular guest at Einar Bannister’s duck shack out on the Beluga flats every September.”

“Collusion,” Kate said. “Conspiracy. Also,” she added, “justice.”

Brendan sobered. “As close to it as the girl was going to get, I reckon.” He smiled, and Johnny felt a chill run up his spine. “Myself, I’m of the opinion that castration without benefit of anesthesia, followed by hanging, drawing, and quartering at high noon in the town square, televised live on all local stations with viewing made mandatory by all citizens either live or in living color, would be a more effective deterrent.”

Kate thought of Gary Drussell’s youngest daughter putting the moves on a boy she had met for the first time half an hour before, and said, “Sounds about right to me.”

Johnny’s eyes went wide. “Jeeze, you guys.”

“Sorry, kid,” Brendan said, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Thanks, Brendan,” Kate said. “I appreciate you coming in on your day off to help.”

“I have no days off. My pleasure.” He found a leer somewhere and produced it to effect. “Your tab’s piling up, Shugak.”

She batted her eyelashes. “I can hardly wait until the bill comes due, McCord.”

“Really,” said a dry voice from the doorway.

They turned and Jim Chopin was standing there.

They all wound up at the Lucky Wishbone for a late lunch. Jim was jealous of Kate’s easy camaraderie with Brendan, trying like hell not to show it, and not succeeding very well. Brendan was hugely enjoying the resulting spectacle and losing no opportunity to flirt with Kate by word, glance, and touch.

Kate was doing her best to ignore them both, which wasn’t easy, because the only other person there to talk to was Johnny, and Johnny wasn’t speaking to any of them because before Kate had left Brendan’s office, she had called his mother and set up a meeting for later that afternoon. He’d stared at her, speechless in betrayal, and had refused to listen to any explanation she had tried to give between Third and L and Fifth and Karluk. She’d given up, finally, saying the one thing she’d never expected to hear out of her own mouth: “I’m older than you are, I’m smarter than you are, and I’m tougher than you are. You’re going to have to trust me that this is the right thing to do.”

They were pulling into the parking lot as she spoke, and his eyes grew to the size of saucers. “Look! Look at that!”

“What?” She looked where he was pointing with an accusing finger.

“There’re cops all over the place!”

Three blue-and-whites were parked in front of the row of windows that separated booths from the parking lot. “So cops like fried chicken. That a problem for you?”

He’d slammed out of the Subaru without replying and stamped over to where Brendan and Jim were waiting. He’d made his displeasure known in a few curt sentences and been further outraged by Brandon saying, “Better to get it over with, kid,” and Jim saying, “He’s right, Johnny.” So he sat in a corner of the booth, face like a thundercloud, studiously ignoring the gang of men in black and badges sitting in the next booth and shoveling in fried chicken and French fries in a mechanical manner that wrung the heart of Heidi, their ebullient, redheaded server. She kept topping up his Coke and adding to his fries with a hopeful smile, which he ignored until Jim pulled his cap off and smacked Johnny with it. Even then all Heidi got was a stiff nod of the head and a gruff “thanks.” Kate longed to send him out to wait in the Subaru, but she was restrained by the fear that he would take off, and by the knowledge that his anger was caused by fear.