“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.

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?”