Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 05 - Play With Fire

by Play

  "Perhaps," Kate agreed. She hesitated, and caused a puzzled frown to crease her brow. "It was a very dry summer, last summer."

  He nodded his head regally, as if he himself had been responsible for it. "It was."

  "And the Park Service had the area on fire alert."

  "They had."

  She gave a tiny sigh. "Then, Pastor Seabolt, I'm afraid I simply cannot make any sense of this." She looked up and met his eyes with every evidence of frank bewilderment, and repeated, "What was your son doing out there in the first place? During a fire alert? With no clothes on?"

  They both pondered this knotty problem for a few moments. She watched him, and finally he spread his hands, reminding Kate of nothing so much as a picture she had once seen of Christ ascending to heaven, hands spread benignly in just that same fashion. "Who can say, Sister Shugak?"

  He dropped his voice to a confidential tone. "You knew my son was a widower." "I did," she said, equally grave.

  He shook his head again, and looked so sad that for a moment Kate thought he might burst into tears. "I'm afraid he never recovered from her loss." She said, too bluntly, "Are you saying he was mentally imbalanced over her death, and that was why he was out wandering around naked in front of a forest fire?"

  He withdrew a little. "Those matters are for God and God alone to judge," he said austerely. He thawed again, and leaned forward to place an avuncular hand on her knee. "Have you been born again, Sister Shugak?"

  "No."

  "Oh, my dear, my dear." He shook his head. "Let Jesus knock at the door of your heart, and accept the joy of walking with God for yourself, before it is too late."

  She slid her knee from beneath that avuncular, suddenly very heavy hand.

  "Jesus Christ will come knocking at the door of my heart in his own good time, not yours," she said, and was immediately annoyed that she had allowed him to goad her into the retort.

  He knew it. There was a flash of triumph in his eyes, immediately repressed and replaced by the carefully cultivated appearance of dignified grief.

  Kate wanted to say something to wipe out the smirk lurking behind the very affecting sorrow he had on display. No. Best to hold her hand until she knew more. She rose to her feet and offered a formal apology for being the bearer of such sad tidings. With a saintly expression that made her want to bite him, he forgave her.

  His voice stopped her at the door. "Sister Shugak?" She turned her head.

  "Yes?"

  "I would, if I may, direct you to a verse in the Bible." She waited as he opened the Bible on his desk and thumbed the pages at the back of the book. "Ah yes, here it is. Romans. Chapter 12, Verse 19." He closed the book and sat with it between his hands, looking, in the scant shaft of sunlight, very upright and patriarchal.

  "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that verse, Pastor Seabolt."

  He gave her a forgiving smile and did not reply.

  "I'll look it up," she promised.

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment and dismissal.

  Outside the cabin, she heard a low voice call out. "Hey."

  She looked around and beheld her client. She pulled the door shut behind her and walked toward him, halting when he held up one hand like a traffic cop. "Hi."

  He was very much the champion for Christ today and went straight to the point. "I hired you to find my father. You found him. You don't have to do any more."

  "I see." She studied him. His spine was straight, his chin was up, his blue eyes steady and unswerving. Even righteous. In spite of the redness left by the tears. "Matthew, I--"

  "It's done," he said, and produced another fistful of crumpled dollar bills. "You did your job. You can go home now."

  She looked from him to the fistful of bills and back to him. "Matthew.

  Don't you want to know what happened?"

  He thrust the bills at her. "You want more? I can get more."

  "Matthew, don't you want to know what your father was doing out there?

  Don't you want to know how he died?"

  His voice rose. "You found him. That's all I wanted. You can stop now.

  He's dead. Nothing is going to bring him back to life."

  "I assume your grandfather has spoken," Kate said.

  It was the wrong thing to say. Humor did not dare raise its ugly head in the presence of the Almighty. His chest rose and fell. "You're fired. Do you hear me? You're fired. You're not working for me anymore. I want you to stop."

  "No, Matthew," she said. "I won't stop."

  He thrust the wad of bills back in his pocket and stiffened into a miniature replica of the man inside the house. "God will punish you for your willfulness and your pride." He turned to march off.

  Sanctimonious little shit, she thought, watching him go. Bobby was right.

  But a sanctimonious little shit who'd had a very hard time and was in a lot of pain. She wished she could like him.

  She didn't have to, to help him.

  It would be easier, though.

  She drove back down the road to Chistona and hung out arounnd the store.

  Russell Gillespie did not look pleased to see her and did his best to ignore her. She stood in a corner and watched his customers shop and him ring up tabs. The hunting tunic hung on the wall above his head and glowed like a gem in the half-light.

  Russell's attitude was one his customers shared. Kate hadn't felt this frozen out since she chased Toni Hartzler down in a raging blizzard on the North Slope. When she said hello to someone, they moved past her.

  When she tried to introduce herself, they looked through her. When she asked a question, they pretended they had not heard.

  She moved to a spot outside and tried to engage people in friendly conversation as they emerged, but the mukluk telegraph had done its usual thorough job and the most she got was from an older woman with defeated eyes who said, edging toward her Subaru, "Really, I don't know anything about it." "About what?" Kate said.

  "About whatever it is you want to talk about," the woman said, and climbed into her car and drove off. Kate gave up finally and went around back to see if Sally were home. She was. She even answered the door. She stood on the threshold, one hand on the knob, looking at Kate with an expression that was easy to identify. Fear. She asked one question of her own. "Is it true you found Daniel Seabolt's body?"

  "Yes."

  The other woman's eyes filled with tears and a hand came up to cover her mouth. "Oh my dear lord."

  Kate waited. Sally got herself under control and started to close the door. Kate put one hand against it, holding it open. "Wait. Please.

  I'd just like to ask you a few questions."

  Sally shook her head blindly. "I can't. I'm sorry. Please go away and leave me alone." One of her children was standing directly behind her, clutching his mother's waist and peering around her hips with a scared face. "And please, don't ever come back here again. Please."

  Kate was not in the habit of frightening women and children. She removed her hand and the door swung shut in her face.

  "Damn it." Huffing out an exasperated sigh she stood, hands on hips, thinking. She could talk to Brad Burns again, see if he had anything to add. She doubted it; he would have advertised, held it out as bait for her return.

  She thought of driving up the road to Gakona and visiting Auntie Joy to see if she or Emaa had heard anything useful. If there was anything to be heard, those two would have heard every syllable, every nuance.

  She looked at her watch. It was getting on for six o'clock, and she was tired and hungry and so she decided to return to camp instead.

  Negotiating the lumps and bumps and washouts of the road to the turnoff, Kate realized that not one of the local residents she had told of Daniel Seabolt's death had asked how he had died.

  Not even his father.

  The attack came in the early hours of the morning, when the sun had dropped below the horizon for a few hours, leaving a pale smudge of burnt umber on the horizon to mark its departure and prom
ise its speedy return. They swooped down on the two tents in a quick, silent rush.

  Kate was summoned from sleep by a sudden scramble of Mutt's feet outside the tent and a warning bark. "What?" she said groggily. "What is it, girl?"

  The roof of the tent seemed to cave in over her head. Something blunt came down hard on her left shoulder. "Ouch!" Her right thigh caught a smart, stinging rap and she rolled instinctively into a ball, arms protecting her head.

  "What the fuck!" she heard Bobby roar, a cry of pain came from Dinah, and blows rained down on Kate's forearms. "Mutt!" she yelled, her voice muffled in the tangling folds of tent and sleeping bag. "Take!

  Take, Mutt!"

  There was an answering snarl and a man's cry of pain.

  "Ouch!"

  "Get that goddam dog away from me!"

  "Shit!"

  A yelp from Mutt, another snarl and snap, a shriek of real pain and fear this time, and a third voice yelled, "Come on, we've given her enough to think about, let's get outta here!"

  The blows ceased abruptly and the crunch of heavy, rapidly moving footsteps receded down the hill, Mutt's rumbling growl following close behind.

  "Mutt!" Kate yelled, still muffled in the folds of bag and tent.

  "Come!"

  A few moments later came the roar of an engine. One of them must have stayed in their truck with the engine running. Kate lay for a moment, panting, and listened to the truck's engine shift into gear and recede into the night. She recovered enough to move her limbs cautiously, one at a time, checking by feel to see if anything had been broken. Nothing had, but she hurt all over, especially her forearms and her right thigh.

  It took a while longer to fight her way out of the smothering folds of her sleeping bag and find the zipper to the flap of the tent, which had rolled with her when she rolled to protect her head.

  She emerged to see Bobby's head poke through the folds of his collapsed tent on the other side of the clearing. He turned immediately to assist Dinah and Kate hurried to help. The blonde hissed with pain when Kate gripped her arm, moaned when Kate shifted her hold to the elbow, and whimpered when Kate tried to grasp her shoulder.

  Bobby batted her hands out of the way, rocked forward on his stumps and had Dinah free in three quick moves. She could walk, barely, and limped over to collapse next to the fire. The rocks of the fireplace had been scattered across the clearing, the grill knocked off its legs and a coal was trying to ignite a patch of grass before Kate grabbed the upended cooler and poured what was left of the melted ice over it.

  She reassembled the fire ring, scooped up some kindling and blew on the remaining coals until one of them caught. She fed it, one stick at a time, until the fire was crackling with energy and giving off a solid amount of heat. She retrieved a few pieces of scattered firewood and piled it on. Dinah, shivering, scooted nearer.

  Kate rose to her feet, her joints creaking with the effort. "Where's Mutt?" she said suddenly. She felt her first real flare of panic. "Mutt?

  Mutt, where are you? Mutt!"

  There was one terrifying moment of silence that for Kate lasted at least a year, and then Mutt limped into the circle of light. "Are you hurt, girl? Come here, let me see." Kate dropped to her knees to run exploring hands over her. When they encountered her right foreleg, Mutt gave a quick, distressed yelp, of which she immediately looked ashamed.

  Kate went over her one more time, to be sure. The bruised foreleg was all she found. Relief that nothing was broken was quickly followed by rage and she shot to her feet, hands clenched at her sides. "Those sanctimonious, self-righteous, Jesus-freaking sons of bitches." "Not now," Bobby said tersely, puzzling out the framework of his tent.

  "Better keep moving. You won't be able to later."

  She knew he was right and after a tense, inner struggle packed the rage away for a later time. A later time that would come, she vowed fiercely to herself. She went to her tent to see what she could make of the mess.

  Dinah, moving painfully, went to collect the scattered heap of supplies.

  An hour later, when most of the camp had been more or less returned to its previous condition, Bobby made a pot of coffee and the three of them sat down stiffly around the campfire, heavily sugared mugs in hand. Mutt leaned up against Kate, who knotted one hand in her ruff, taking as much comfort from the warm, solid presence as she gave with her own. The sweet, scalding coffee blazed down her throat and burned into her gut.

  Her stomach lurched once and then steadied beneath the assault. "I'm sorry, guys," she said, the apology coming out in a husky rasp. "This was my fault."

  "Cut it out," Bobby growled.

  "Oh," Dinah inquired, "is that what you were doing in Chistona all day?

  Hiring those men to come out here and beat us up?"

  "No, but I was doing something just as bad."

  "What?"

  "Asking questions. I know better. You don't go poking your nose into other people's business out here. It's not smart. And it sure as hell isn't safe." "More to the point," Bobby said, "what is it they are so all-fired afraid of, that they come up here and try to scare you off?"

  "I wish I knew," she said, nursing her mug, staring into the fire.

  "They won't talk. And this little demonstration proves how determined they are not to."

  "Think it has something to do with your finding Seabolt's body?"

  "Yes."

  "Gonna give up trying to find out what happened to him?"

  Kate's answer was immediate and unequivocal. "No."

  Bobby's white teeth flashed in the firelight. "Didn't think so."

  Finishing her coffee, she rose to return to her interrupted sleep and paused. "Dinah?"

  The blonde, caught in the act of a slow and careful rising, sank back down gratefully on the ground. "What?"

  "You still have that Bible with you?"

  Dinah gestured with her chin. "In the left pocket of my duster. In the tent. Or it was."

  Kate searched until she found it, and brought the book back to read it by the light of the fire, although by now she was almost able to read it in the light of the dawn. "What are you looking for?" Dinah said, watching her.

  "Seabolt quoted a verse at me this afternoon. I forgot until now."

  "Which one?"

  "Romans. Chapter 12, Verse 19." She lost her place. "Rats, I can't find it." "You don't have to," Bobby said. "

  "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

  Her head snapped up and she stared at him, Bible forgotten in her hands, and he nodded once, grimly. "Yes. It was a warning."

  Kate put the Bible back and crawled into her tent without a word. Mutt lay in the open flap, body a solid presence against Kate's feet.

  Neither of them moved a muscle for what remained of the night.

  CHAPTER 5.

  Now whether this imperfection of the earth, for it cannot he said to be anything else, grows, or whether it has at once assumed its full globular size, whether it lives or not, are matters which I think cannot be easily understood.

  She left for Fairbanks the next morning at eight a.m. Dinah had a shiner turning an attractive shade of purple, the entire left side of Bobby's face was swollen and all three of them were stiff and careful in motion. At least no bones had been broken and they were in motion, as Dinah helpfully pointed out. Kate suggested the two of them pack up and head back to the Park. "Hell with that," Bobby roared. "We came to pick shrooms, let's goddam pick shrooms!" He shifted from defense to offense.