Louis faked a yawn. “I’m sorry, Jim, was there a point to your story? A punch line? Any ending in sight at all?”
“Dan O’Brien’s got a map up on the Step. It shows that someone has been granted subsurface mineral rights to a tract of land that sits partly on the land the Smiths say they own.”
Louis’s eyes narrowed, but his voice remained calm. “Really?”
“Really,” Jim said. “Bernie showed me through his nugget collection a couple of times, Louis. I vividly remember the one that came out of Salmon Creek.”
“Which Salmon Creek?” Louis said, displaying a mild interest. “There must be twenty of them in the Park, and a thousand of them in the state.”
“But only one that rises in Suulutaq Glacier, Louis. You know what suulutaq means in Aleut, don’t you? ‘Gold,’ Louis. It means ‘gold.’ “
“Really,” Louis said, but he said it just a beat late. If Jim hadn’t been watching him closely, he wouldn’t have caught it. It was enough to confirm his suspicions, which was a good thing because it was very probably the only confirmation he was going to get in this whole sorry affair.
“You weren’t stealing the nuggets when you broke into Bernie’s house, Louis. You were stealing the little bits of paper with the nuggets’ provenance on them. The one from the Suulutaq was more specific than general in directions, and it was going to show you and Father Smith the way to a gold strike, or so you thought. God forbid you get out there on your knees with a pan and try to find it for yourself. No, you wanted a shortcut. You always go for the shortcuts, Louis.”
There was a brief silence. “Interesting story,” Louis said, and smiled. “Needs an ending.” Jim turned on his heel and walked out. Behind him, Louis started to laugh.
Jim was so angry, he didn’t hear Maggie at first, and she had to repeat herself. “Boss!”
“What?”
Maggie recoiled, and Jim realized he was standing in the front office. “I’m sorry, Maggie. What is it?”
“Judge Singh on line one.”
Jim swore beneath his breath and snatched up the phone from Maggie’s desk. “Chopin here.”
“Sergeant Chopin? Robbie Singh.”
“Yes, Your Honor. What can I do for you?”
He heard a heavy sigh. “You have to let Louis Deem go, Sergeant. I’m sorry.”
“Judge, I—do you know what this guy—?”
“I know all about him, but you haven’t made your case, Sergeant. Mr. Rickard is quite prepared to sue you, me, the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Law, and the state of Alaska for wrongful imprisonment if we don’t let his client go.”
“Judge—”
“Let him go, Jim,” she said. “Now.”
She hung up, and he replaced the telephone in its cradle.
Maggie, who had heard too much of that phone call for her own peace of mind, hooked an unceremonious thumb over her shoulder. “Somebody to see you.”
“Oh.” Oh God. The very last person he wanted to see at this moment. “Hey, Bernie.”
“Hey, Jim.”
“Come on in.” Jim walked into his office, trying to arrange his face into some semblance of sanity.
Bernie, receding hair pulled back in its usual pony-tail from a drawn face and haunted eyes, sat in one of the chairs across from Jim’s desk. Jim went around and sat in his chair.
“Do you mind?” Bernie got up again to close the door.
“No,” Jim said, but he was wary. This was usually the part where the victims’ relatives, suffering from survivor’s guilt, sought out a target for their frustration and rage and grief. The easiest target was always the cop on the beat.
Bernie sat down again. He didn’t say anything immediately. Jim, still mastering his fury at that smug, murdering son of a bitch in the cells, was happy to sit without speaking. Anything to delay the moment he’d have to actually turn the key in the lock and let him out.
“I was talking to Auntie Vi,” Bernie said.
Great. Another country heard from. “Oh, yeah? About?”
“Auntie Vi says all you’ve got is the kid’s testimony that it was Louis he saw at the house.”
“That plus Abigail Smith says she was with him all night that night.”
Bernie looked tired. “Come on, Jim, you know she’s lying. Who knows why all these women lie for Louis Deem, but they do, over and over again, until it literally kills them. I’ve seen him pick up women at the Roadhouse and I want to go over the bar and grab them and nail them into a barrel and feed them through the bunghole until they get over it.”
There was an edge of bitterness to his voice that told Jim a great deal. “Bernie?”
Bernie sighed. “Yeah. Last summer.”
“When you and Laurel Meganack—?”
“Yeah. Enid found out. She had a couple of revenge fucks and told me all about them. Len Dreyer was one.”
Len Dreyer being the Park handyman who had been murdered the summer before. Jim already knew this, and Bernie knew he knew it. “And Louis?”
Bernie nodded. “Louis was another.”
“What did you do?”
Bernie shrugged. “He scared her. She just wanted revenge, not to get killed. I think she only slept with him the once.”
“Where?”
Bernie nodded, as if he’d known Jim would ask. “Our house. Our bed. She made sure I knew that, too.”
There wasn’t anything Jim could say that would help, so he kept quiet.
“I figure that’s when he saw the collection, and he’s been making plans to steal it ever since.”
“Your nugget collection.”
“But we can’t prove it, can we?”
“No.”
“You’re sure, though, aren’t you?”
“There is no physical evidence, Bernie. No fingerprints, no muddy footprints, no car tracks, no hairs or blood spatters to do a DNA analysis of, nothing like that.”
“But you’re sure.”
Jim shrugged. “Doesn’t matter if I’m sure. Matters only if I can prove it.”
“Where’s my gold? We find that, maybe ...”
“The Park’s a big place, Bernie. Louis’s lived here all his life. It could be anywhere.”
“It would help if you found some, though. Like maybe in his house.”
Jim sat up straight. “We searched Louis’s house and all the outbuildings the day after the crime, right after Johnny ID’d Louis as the guy he saw. We didn’t find anything then, and it is highly unlikely that even the most credulous jury is going to think finding your stolen gold this long after the crime is convincing of anything other than that someone planted the evidence after the fact. Especially when Rickard gets done with them.”
“Howie.”
“And Willard.”
Bernie shrugged. “Louis never calls Willard in any of his trials.”
“Yeah. I know. The DA’s stopped subpoenaing him, too. He’s not the most convincing witness.”
“So. It’s all on Johnny.”
“Yes.” Bernie was getting at something, and Jim was curious enough to hold off telling Bernie the bad news. It was a minor miracle he didn’t know it already, but then he’d been holding himself pretty incommunicado there at the house, and the aunties made a first-class defensive line.
“He’s just a kid, Jim.”
“He’s fourteen.”
“Still. Even if you by some miracle manage to get Louis to trial, I can hear his lawyer now. He’ll say Johnny was terrified, confused, he didn’t know what he was seeing.” Bernie met Jim’s eyes. “Then he’ll talk about how you’ve persecuted poor Louis Deem all these years and how you’ve never managed to make anything stick. And you know what’ll come next.”
Jim was silent. Of course he knew.
“He’ll drag Kate into it, and your relationship with her, and how through her you exerted undue influence on Johnny so you could finally nail Louis Deem.”
There it was, Jim’s nightmare given voice.
“It’s the best kind of lie, Jim, and the most convincing because so many parts of it are true. You have been looking for a way to lock up Louis Deem practically since you were sworn in.”
“I’m not exactly unique in that, Bernie. Everyone in Alaskan law enforcement has.”
Bernie was relentless. “Yeah, but Rickard’ll make it all about you. You have been sleeping with Kate Shugak. You do have a relationship with Johnny Morgan.”
Jim thought of Frank Rickard and his rumpled JCPenney suits and his oxford shoes with the triple-knotted laces and that apologetic air that let jury after jury know how much he regretted having to point out the error of the state’s ways, but that he was the sole custodian of the truth and he was bound by oath and by honor to share it with them. “Yeah,” he said heavily. “I know.”
“I figure you can stand up under it. Kate’ll eat Rickard for breakfast and he knows it, so he won’t do anything but hint, but some of that’s bound to stick, too. Johnny, it’ll go a little tougher on, but what I’ve seen of him tells me that, young as he is, he’s a stand-up guy.”
“But you’re thinking—”
Bernie nodded. “Jury’ll start wondering about your motive in charging Louis, instead of Louis’s motive in killing Enid and Fitz.”
“Thereby creating reasonable doubt.”
“What I’m thinking,” Bernie said. The longer he spoke, the calmer he got. He was matter-of-fact now, even dispassionate in his consideration of the possibilities. It was obvious he had given this a great deal of thought. “Of course, there’s the photos you took. Be hard to overlook the bodies of a woman and child on their own doorstep. But we’re also talking about the rest of a man’s life here, and for that one guy on the jury who either just moved to the Park or who’s been living in a cave the whole time he was here, he won’t be thinking how Louis Deem’s the new poster child for the Ted Bundy task force. And so they’ll be looking at Johnny Morgan, and they’ll listen to Rickard do that voodoo that he does so well, and they’ll wonder.”
Impeach the witness. Not like it hadn’t worked before, and for Louis Deem, too.
“Or,” Bernie said.
Jim couldn’t remember when he felt more depressed. Or more impotent.
Or more terrified of losing something he wasn’t even sure he had.
“Or what?” he said. “What is it you want me to do, Bernie?”
Bernie met his eyes straight on. “Your job.”
Later that morning Jim opened the cell door and Louis Deem walked out a free man.
“Don’t take it so hard, Jim,” he said. “We’ll see each other again soon, I’m sure.”
He laughed all the way down the hall. Jim stared at the open, empty cell, and all that it meant, and he wanted to run down the hall and drag Deem back by the scruff of his neck. He did start after him and got to the office in time to see Deem bending over Maggie, saying something in a voice too low for Jim to hear.
A tear slid down Maggie’s cheek.
“You son of a bitch,” Jim said, and was on Deem like lightning. He grabbed him up by the collar and the seat of the pants, kicked the door open, and pitched Deem out.
Deem scrambled to his feet, his face for once black with fury.
Jim pointed a finger. “Start walking, Deem. Now.”
Deem calmed, even managed to summon up his smile. “Whatever you say, Officer. I’ll go peaceable.”
He turned and almost walked into Kate. “Kate,” he said, biting off her name.
“Louis,” she said. “Oh look, you’re all wet.” She brushed a clump of mud from the front of his shirt. The breath whooshed out of him, and he bent over a little. She leaned forward and said something in his ear, patted his cheek hard enough that Jim could hear the crack of skin on skin, and walked past Deem to the post. Over her shoulder Jim watched Deem slowly straighten and start walking.
That was the scariest thing about Louis Deem, his ability to master his rage. To save it, to hoard it for use against a future day.
“So you let him go,” Kate said.
“Got the call,” Jim said. “Judge Singh was pretty firm.”
“I’m going to talk to Abigail,” Kate said.
Jim watched Deem as he disappeared down the road. He’d refused to get a message to Howie Katel-nikof that Louis Deem needed a ride, and he only hoped the son of a bitch had to walk every one of the thirty miles to his place. “What’s the point?” he said, suddenly very weary.
“She’s his alibi. We have to start rebuilding this case somewhere. You want to come with?”
Jim shrugged. “I suppose. Might as well.” He got his hat and coat. “Johnny’s in school?”
“Surrounded by a hundred other kids and half a dozen teachers.”
“Mutt?”
“Home under the deck.”
“Weird to see you without her.”
“She didn’t like being left behind, either. Come on,” she said, urging him toward the Blazer. “Let’s go.”
No new snow had fallen, and most of the last had worn away, so if anything, the track to the Smiths’ property was even more rutted. Father Smith and the older kids were starting to lay the roof. Inside, the younger kids held up Sheetrock while Mother Smith screwed it into place.
Jim stepped onto the deck, Kate at his side. “Mr. Smith”
Smith stepped nimbly rafter to rafter to stand at the edge of the roof and look down at them with his usual benign air. “Sergeant Chopin.”
“I wonder if I might speak with Abigail.”
Smith sighed and said, courteous as ever, “You’ve already spoken with her.”
“I’m afraid I have a few more questions. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
Smith looked at Abigail, up on the roof with him. Abigail crawled over the rafters less nimbly than her father and shinnied down the ladder.
“Abigail, wait,” her father said, a foot on the top rung.
Abigail ignored him, marching up to Jim as if she were marching out to face a firing squad and said without preamble, “I lied.”
Jim gaped at her. “I beg your pardon?”
Smith’s feet hit the deck with a resounding thud, and Kate had the pleasure of seeing him shaken out of his customary sangfroid. “Abigail!”
Mrs. Smith emerged on the deck, squinting against the sun. “Father? What’s wrong?” She saw Jim and Kate. “Oh, oh, no. Abigail—”
“I lied,” Abigail said stonily. “I wasn’t with Louis the night those two people were shot.”
“Abigail!” Mrs. Smith said.
“I’m sorry,” Abigail said, and she actually held out her hands, wrists together. “If you have to arrest me, I’m ready to go.”
Kate looked at her long and hard.
“I loved him, and I truly didn’t think he did it,” Abigail said in response to that look. It might have sounded more convincing if Abigail hadn’t made it sound like she were reading, badly, from a script. “And we were engaged to be married. I thought it was my duty as his affianced wife. Wives submit ye unto your husbands as your husbands submit themselves unto God.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Abigail!” Smith said. Kate thought he looked more outraged than shocked, and the outrage struck her as bogus as the shock.
“It’s a sin to lie,” Abigail said, with more anger than piety in her voice. Kate wondered who she was so mad at. “I couldn’t have that on my conscience. If Louis didn’t do it then he won’t need me to prove him innocent. It is in God’s hands.”
Automatically everyone except Kate and Jim made the sign of the cross. Chloe and Hannah were standing in the doorway, hands clasped. They were watching their sister with what Kate could only describe as awe, tears rolling down their cheeks. Poor little mites. Probably none of their siblings had gone against their parents before. Kate hoped she sniffed rebellion in the air.
Jim, she saw, was gloriously speechless. He’d been prepared to browbeat Abigail into telling the truth, bad cop all the way, and here
she’d up and admitted it freely, of her own volition, without even being asked the direct question. “I, uh, you’ll have to come to the post and retract your previous statement, and, uh, yeah, I’ll have to take a new one.”
“Let’s go.” Abigail marched around him, went down the steps, and climbed into the Blazer’s backseat, where she folded her arms and sat, waiting.
The Smiths, mere et pere, looked at each other. Kate, watching, saw dismay there, and something else, something she was unable to identify. She tucked the memory away for later, when she’d have time to puzzle it out.
In the meantime, Jim fell back a step. “Well, uh, thanks,” he said. “I’ll see that Abigail gets back home when we’re done. With the statement. You know. At the post.”
Mrs. Smith stretched out an impulsive hand. Her husband gripped her shoulder. She let the hand fall. Her question was forlorn, almost a wail. “Is she under arrest, Sergeant?”
Jim tugged his cap back on his head. “No, ma’am,” he said, retiring in good order. Over his shoulder he added, “Not yet.”
He drove as fast as he could back to Niniltna, ushered Abigail into the post, and lost no time in deposing her. He kept Kate and Maggie in the office with them the whole time so no one could say she was coerced or intimidated in any way. He had her swear to the truth of her statement in front of Maggie, Kate, and Billy Mike, dragooned from up the hill, and had Maggie make multiple copies, all of which he made Abigail sign individually.
Kate watched this frantic productivity a little quizzically. “Shouldn’t you be going after Louis now? He can’t have that much of a head start on you.”
“Take Abigail home, would you, Billy?”
Billy looked less than thrilled, because like everyone else he’d heard about the condition of the Smiths’ road, but he acquiesced. Kate, watching him usher Abigail out of the post, thought that he looked exhausted. His wife, Annie, had had that same look on her face at Fitz and Enid’s potlatch, and they both looked like they were losing weight. Losing a son would do that to you.
A Deeper Sleep Page 15
