A Deeper Sleep

by Dana Stabenow

  Old Sam Dementieff sat at a table where the old farts were six deep, holding forth through an inhalation of Alaskan Amber on all the times Louis Deem had fucked everyone over, in the Park, in Ahtna, in Cordova, in the state of Alaska, and last Jim heard he’d moved Outside and was probably going for worldwide. At another table, Mac Devlin and Dan O’Brien were actually having a conversation without coming to blows, a sight that shocked Jim into momentary immobility. A congratulatory and painful punch on his arm from Demetri Totemoff got him started again. George Perry grinned at him from the crowd and said something.

  Jim couldn’t hear him. “What?”

  “Best job I ever had!” George said in a near bellow. “Rather be hauling his sorry carcass to Anchorage than have to haul one of his girls to the Ahtna hospital again!”

  Jim would never again have to take one of Louis Deem’s victims to the morgue in Anchorage, either. Growing comfortable with the stain on his professional soul, he found the reminder comforting.

  Multiple toasts were raised to the late, unlamented Louis Deem. Jim’s presence was no sooner generally recognized than someone started cheering. He was slapped on the back, his reluctant hand wrung until it was numb, and by the time he got to the bar, he had four drinks waiting for him.

  Bernie was in his accustomed place. “Jim,” he said, unsmiling. “What can I do for you?”

  Jim had to raise his voice over the hubbub. “A little conversation, if you don’t mind, Bernie.”

  Those nearest him on his side of the bar overheard and stopped talking to hear more. It spread.

  “What do you want to talk about?” Bernie said.

  “Louis Deem.”

  Bernie shrugged and reached for a bar rag to polish an already spotless glass. “I hear he’s dead. He killed my wife and my child. Don’t expect me to cry any crocodile tears.”

  A muted but distinct murmur of approval rippled out over the growing silence.

  “Maybe we could go over to your house to have this conversation,” Jim said.

  “Maybe we could have it right here,” Bernie said pleasantly. “Say whatever you have to say, Jim.” Bernie included his customers with a nod of his head. “I’m among friends here, and I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  Jim looked around the bar, which by now was dead silent. The jukebox was between songs, and someone had even turned off the huge television hanging from the roof. “Okay,” he said. “Did you hear how Deem died?”

  Beanie examined a minute speck on the glass. “I was told he took a shotgun blast to the chest.”

  There was a murmur of approval. Jim nodded. “You own a twelve-gauge, don’t you?”

  This time the murmur was less approving. Jim could almost smell the hostility gathering. “Yes, I do,” Bernie said.

  “Used it lately?”

  “Not since duck-hunting season last fall,” Bernie said.

  “I’ll need to take a look at it.”

  “Jesus H. Christ on a crutch,” one of the old farts started to say. He was waved to silence by Old Sam, who had fixed Jim with a bright, keen eye.

  Jim raised his voice to be heard. “Routine. You understand.”

  “Of course.” Bernie waved a hand in the direction of his house. “You know where the gun rack is. Feel free.”

  “Thanks.” Jim looked around and found an unfriendly eye everywhere he looked. It actually felt more comfortable to him than the hail-fellow-well-met cheer he’d been initially greeted with. “As I’m sure you already know, Louis Deem was found dead on the road up to the Step.”

  “I heard.”

  “Deem’s roommate, Howie Katelnikof, says Deem never came home after I let him out day before yesterday. Everybody’s best guess is that Deem went out to see Abigail Smith.”

  “What does Abigail say?”

  “That he never got there.”

  Bernie nodded. “I assume by that that she’s still living.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good for her.”

  Jim sighed and pulled at the bill of his cap. “Bernie, I hate like hell having to ask this, but I’ve got to know where you were night before last between the hours of five and eleven.”

  “Jesus Christ, Chopin!” someone said.

  Bernie’s voice overrode the protest. “That when Deem was killed?”

  “From what I can guess by way of body temp and rigor, yeah. I’m hoping the ME can give us something more exact.”

  “Uh-huh.” Bernie nodded. “Well now, let me see. I was home cooking dinner for my kids from seven o’clock on. We ate, I helped them with their homework, I put them to bed. Kathleen had a hard time getting to sleep, so I read to her until almost eleven. And then I went to bed myself.”

  “Where were you from five to seven?”

  “From five to seven?” Bernie didn’t have to raise his voice to be heard, because if someone had dropped a feather on the Roadhouse’s stained floor at that moment, it would have sounded like a bomb going off. “Well, at five I stopped off here to talk to Laurel, see how she was handling things and to let her know I’d be back at work today. And from around five thirty to six thirty yesterday, I was having a cup of coffee at the Riverside Cafe, on Laurel. She’s got that new espresso machine, and Heather likes to have someone to practice her lattes on.”

  Jim rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension that had been building there for what seemed like months. “Anybody you know see you there?”

  A chuckle, quickly muffled, rippled around the room.

  Bernie didn’t smile. “Why, yes. If you will recall, I was having coffee with you. And as I also recall, you think Heather has the americano down.”

  Someone gasped. Someone else laughed out loud. He looked up and saw Old Sam. Old Sam wasn’t laughing, just watching, and when he caught Jim’s eye, he bent his head in acknowledgment and, Jim thought, approval.

  There were no flies on Old Sam Dementieff.

  “Yeah,” Jim said sheepishly to Bernie, “I guess that was me.” He produced a tired smile. “Sorry, Bernie. Been a long two days. I had to ask.”

  Bernie looked sympathetic. “I know you did, Jim. Have a beer?”

  Jim gave his head a regretful shake. “Take a rain check.”

  They shook hands, and as Jim walked out, the crowd parted for him in silence. He rode the edge of a building wave of conversation and before the door closed fully behind him the party was back in full swing.

  He stopped in the middle of the parking lot and pulled his cap off, wiping the sweat from his forehead on his sleeve.

  “Hot in there?”

  He knew that voice. He lowered his arm and looked into Kate’s eyes.

  Another truck pulled up; more merrymakers disgorged themselves and detoured around the silent couple to disappear into the Roadhouse.

  “How did you hear?” he said. Mutt bounded over—well, maybe she didn’t quite bound, but she flounced pretty good—and shoved her nose into his hand. Out of habit he scratched behind her ears and she wriggled with most of her old delight.

  “Billy Mike came out and told me,” she said. “Is it true? Deem was shot at close range with a shotgun?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime night before last between five and eleven, is my guess. I had George haul the body to the lab. I’m hoping the ME can get something a little less approximate, but you know how it is.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It was cold that night. That’ll screw things up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And let’s face it, they probably won’t try that hard. It’s not like they hadn’t had the opportunity to work on a Deem-related corpse before this.”

  “No.”

  She nodded at the Roadhouse. “What did Bernie say?”

  “He’s got a solid alibi. Lots of witnesses.”

  Some of the rigidity went out of her spine. “Good.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Good,” she said again.

  “I had to talk to him,” he said, driven to
defend himself against an attack she hadn’t made.

  She raised her shoulders and let them fall again. “He would always be the obvious suspect.”

  “It was routine,” he said.

  “Practically in the handbook,” she said.

  Mutt trotted a couple of steps toward the Roadhouse and looked back, obviously puzzled. There was no point in driving all this way if they weren’t going inside, where good things in shrink wrap waited for her.

  “Did you think I was going to have to arrest Bernie?” he said.

  “I knew you would if you had to.”

  Her words should have made him feel better. Instead, he felt worse. “Well, I don’t have to.”

  One brow lifted. “I’m glad.”

  They stood in silence for a moment. “Any leads?” she said.

  Glad to take refuge in shop talk, he shook his head. “Not a one. I talked to Howie first thing.”

  “You think Howie might have killed Deem?”

  “Why would he? He’s seriously lacking in motive. Louis was Howie’s meal ticket. But it’s the nearest and dearest—”

  “—with the motive with the mostest,” she finished.

  He almost smiled. “Jack Morgan’s First Law.”

  Neither one of them noticed how unselfconsciously they were able to speak the name of her dead lover out loud. Such would have not been the case a year ago. “What about Abigail?”

  “Abigail.” Without realizing it, Jim let out a sigh. “I went out there, told them what happened. They said none of them had left the homestead in the past week, and that they hadn’t seen Louis since I locked him up.”

  She mulled it over. “I don’t see Abigail killing Deem. But her father?”

  “He’s got eighteen eyewitnesses that put him ten miles away at the time of the murder.”

  “Too bad.” She looked at the Roadhouse. “Well, at least you know for a fact Bernie didn’t do it.”

  “At least.”

  “What?” She peered up at him. “Oh. You’re worried about who did. Who you’re going to have to arrest.”

  “At this point I don’t have a single lead. I’ve got an imprint of Howie’s right front tire at the scene, but hell, he’s just like the rest of us, he never takes his keys out of the ignition. Anyone could have taken off with his Suburban and driven it to Fairbanks. To Whitehorse, to goddamn New York City if they wanted.” He pulled his cap off and scratched his head. “I could probably beat a confession out of Willard. Willard would tell me where Jimmy Hoffa was buried if I held off long enough on the Fig Newtons.”

  “Always supposing he knew who the hell Jimmy Hoffa was to begin with.” She touched his arm. “You know, Jim, it’s not going to break anyone’s heart if you don’t find out who killed Louis Deem. Not even mine.”

  This was a serious statement, coming as it did from Kate Shugak, that pillar of rectitude some called the conscience of the Park. And others called the enforcer.

  “I know,” he said, a little drearily.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He nodded toward the Roadhouse. “You should see them in there, you’d think it was the Fourth of July. Any minute now they’re going to be setting off fireworks. No one mourns the passing of Louis Deem.”

  “You weren’t really expecting any nil nisi bonum, were you? Come on. I’ll buy you a beer.”

  “Another time,” he said, disengaging himself with an almost unobtrusive tug. “I’ve got some stuff to finish up at the post. I’ll see you later.”

  With a slight frown on her face, she watched him drive off. It wasn’t like Jim Chopin to take a case too much to heart, especially when the deceased so richly deserved his demise, and when said demise so richly rewarded his community. The Park would be a safer place without Louis Deem alive and practicing mayhem in it.

  Kate looked at the Roadhouse, where Mutt was still waiting at the door. The Fourth of July, huh?

  Suddenly she didn’t feel much like celebrating, either. “Let’s go, girl,” she said.

  Mutt, ears twitching at the steadily increasing decibel level from the other side of the door, gave this arbitrary decision her consent, and beat Kate to the truck.

  “I let you win,” Kate told her.

  Mutt climbed sedately up on the seat without assistance, curled her tail around her paws, and fixed Kate with a smug yellow eye.

  Sure you did.

  TWELVE

  He didn’t go back to the post. Instead, he drove out to the scene. There wasn’t much left to see. Deem’s body was in Anchorage. A moose had trampled the tire track. He’d already quartered the area looking for a crumpled shotgun shell, a cigarette butt. There was nothing else. This killer had been very neat.

  What other questions could be asked that would need answering? Louis Deem had made himself unfit to live, and someone had taken vigilante action. All of the more recent suspects, Howie, Bernie, Abigail, Father Smith, had been questioned. All of them had alibis.

  The only evidence Jim had from the scene implicated Howie, but as Howie’s own statement showed, anyone could have taken off in Howie’s truck, and Jim himself wouldn’t have voted to convict on the evidence of the tire track alone, especially when he couldn’t show motive.

  Frank Rickard had gotten back to him finally. So far as Rickard knew, Louis Deem had died intestate. “Slippery son of a bitch probably thought he could get out of dying, too,” the lawyer had said cheerfully. “Have to say I’ll miss him. I never cross-examined better than I did when I was defending Louis Deem.”

  “My heart bleeds for you,” Jim had said, and hung up.

  So Howie had no expectation of inheriting. He frowned at the gravel road, hands tucked into his jacket pockets. What had he missed? He’d gathered all the evidence there was. He’d talked to anyone who’d had a motive.

  Why was Louis Deem on this road?

  He looked up, and in the lessening light saw the Quilaks hulking like the bullies they were against the eastern horizon. Halfway between earth and sky, from a flying wedge of rock, lights twinkled at him. Park headquarters.

  Louis Deem’s body had been found on the sole access road to Park headquarters. Beyond this point there was nothing else. From the blood he had been lying in, Deem had been shot at the scene, so he’d ridden out here with his killer. But what if he’d been on his way to the Step anyway?

  Which prompted the question, What business would he have had there?

  He was sitting in Dan’s office, waiting, when Dan got back from the Roadhouse an hour later. “Jim,” Dan said, startled. “What are you doing here?”

  Jim pointed at the wall. “Looking at your map.”

  Dan followed Jim’s finger while he took off his jacket and hung it up. “Oh. Well.” He went back behind his desk and sat down. “Whenever you need to.” His grin looked a little stiff. “We serve at the pleasure of the taxpayer.”

  “Is it my imagination or are you granting a lot more exploratory leases on Park ground?”

  Dan sat back. “I wouldn’t say a lot more,” he said warily. “Why?”

  Jim shook his head. “I’m just seeing a lot more brown on that map than I did the last time I looked at it. Kate was mentioning it the other day, so I thought I’d come take a look for myself.”

  They contemplated the map together in silence. “The thing is, Dan, I keep wondering why Louis Deem was found on the road up to the Step.”

  Dan fiddled with a pencil. “It’s a pretty lonely piece of road, Jim. We fly out of here a lot more than we drive, and not many people live much past the Gette place.”

  “So you think the killer drove him up here because he could be pretty sure he wouldn’t be seen, booted Louis out of the truck, shot him, and drove back down to town?”

  Dan shrugged. “I guess.”

  “You’re probably right,” Jim said.

  Dan shrugged again.

  “But I wonder if maybe Louis wasn’t headed up here to begin with,” Jim said. “Howie and Willard said he didn’t go home the morni
ng I turned him loose. He didn’t go up to the Smiths’. Nobody else saw him. There just aren’t that many roads out of Niniltna, Dan.”

  Dan said nothing.

  Jim leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked down at his clasped hands. “I was wondering if maybe you saw something at the scene that you forgot to mention.”

  “Forgot what?”

  Jim looked over at the map. “Kate thinks Louis Deem had something going on with Father Smith, something to do with gold mining on Salmon Creek. I haven’t had time to run a title search, but I figured you’d know. Do the Smiths own the subsurface mineral rights to their property?”

  There was a long silence. At the end of it, Dan sighed. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a manila envelope. He held it out to Jim.

  Jim took it. A corner of the envelope had a dried brown stain on one corner. He removed the document and unfolded it. It was in fact the title to a piece of property whose legal description as near as he could figure it matched the location of the Smiths’ forty acres, and they did in fact retain subsurface mineral rights, grandfathered back to the first owners of the property, circa 1896.

  The most interesting thing on the document was the fact that it listed co-owners. Aloysius Conrad Smith and Louis James Deem. He looked up at Dan. “You figure Louis was bringing this up here to apply for permission to dig for gold?”

  Dan nodded miserably.

  “You take this off the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah hell, Dan.”

  “I’m sorry, Jim,” and indeed, Dan looked wretched. “It was sticking out of his jacket pocket, ready to fall out. I was half in the bag already, and I wasn’t thinking. I picked it up, and when I did, I knew what it was right away.”

  “What,” Jim said, disgusted, “you were afraid I’d think you’d shot him for it?”