The corresponding bloodstain on the white linoleum-tile floor had dried
a hard brown. She'd been shot once, had
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fallen to the couch, then to the floor. They'd found no evidence that
she'd hit the table.
Bookcases, homemade but sturdily built and nicely finished with a
natural stain and a light coating of varnish, filled every available
inch of the wall space above the couch backs, between the windows, and
below the ceiling. The books were alphabetized by author, all history,
all about eras of Alaskan history, World War II, gold rush days, the
Civil War. Some Kate recognized from her own library: The Thousand Mile
War by Brian Garfield, The Flying North by Jean Potter, Pierre Berton's
The Klondike Rush, his mother's I Married the Klondike, and Murray
Morgan's Confederate Raider. Little yellow sticky notes festooned the
pages, where passages had been marked in light pencil.
She saw an oversized book bound in leather with fading letters on the
spine, which proved to be a copy of the duke of Abruzzi's account of his
expedition to climb Mount St. Elias in 1897, a book Kate had given up on
acquiring when Rachel at Twice Told Tales in Anchorage had told her it
was priced on the Internet at seven hundred and fifty dollars. There
were photographs, and she sat down on the unstained couch and leafed
through them, pausing to read a paragraph here and there.
She replaced the book on the shelf with due reverence, and wondered what
other treasures Paula had hidden away in her little tin hot dog. There
was no filing cabinet, no notes. Everything Paula had been working on
must have been either in the notebooks or on the laptop.
The kitchen cupboards were neatly organized, the dishes inelamine, the
pots and pans Paul Revere, the glassware Wal-Mart, the flatware Costco.
In the little refrigerator filed beneath the counter there was an aging
block of cheddar cheese, a half-empty carton of eggs, and a bunch of
green onions that looked like they were melting. The remainder of a loaf
of Wonder Bread on the counter was dried hard. There was a box of Walker
shortbread rounds in the
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cupboard, the only evidence of sin. The sink, the tiny gas stove and
oven, everything was spotlessly clean. The countertops looked new, some
kind of fake wood. The cupboard below was stocked with dish soap,
clothes soap, bleach, paper towels, and plastic trash bags, all in giant
economy-size boxes. Paula hated to shop, and bought large when she did
so she wouldn't have to do so again any time soon. Kate's heart warmed
to her, and hardened toward her killer.
Down the tiny hallway the bathroom was stocked with Ivory soap in
hand-bar and bath-bar sizes, half-gallon jugs of generic shampoo and
conditioner with pump handles, another half gallon of generic hand
lotion on the sink. The single bed (more room for bookshelves) had two
changes of sheets, one on and one in the clothes hamper, a quilt for
summer and a down comforter for winter. Paula hadn't liked to shop, and
she wasn't a prisoner of her possessions, and for no reason this
realization made Kate's anger at Paula's killer run higher. Paula
Pawlowski had refined living down to its essentials, so that she could
concentrate on what mattered.
What mattered was books, if the bulk of the contents of the trailer was
any indication. Shelves, built-in and freestanding, took up every
available inch of floor space, were wedged between bed and wall, were
mounted over all the windows. Every one of them was lined with books. It
took Kate a while to see that they were in alphabetical order, clockwise
from the door, starting with the five-shelf bookshelf nailed to the
divider between the kitchen/living room and the bedroom, and ending with
the two shelves mounted on brackets over the toilet in the bathroom. She
saw Jane Austen, L. Frank Baum, Lois McMasters Bujold, Bernard Cornwell
by the door; Loren Estelman, Steven Gould, Robert Heinlein, Georgette
Heyer (and now she was seriously angry), John D. MacDonald, L. M.
Montgomery, Ellis Peters, J. K. Rowling, Sharon Shinn, Nevil Shute down
one side of the little hallway, around and over the bed; Laura
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Ingalls Wilder and Don Winslow over the toilet.
There weren't that many people in the world who read for fun, who would
rather read than watch television, who were physically incapable of
walking past a bookstore. Kate had come to it late, a gift from a gifted
English teacher at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, which meant
that she had a keen sense of time wasted, a reverence for the art, and
deep respect for those who practiced it. She looked at all of Paula
Pawlowski's books and realized that Paula had been a lifelong friend of
hers before they'd ever met. She found herself growing very calm.
I will find out who did this to you, she said silently to the spine of
The Death and Life of Bobby Z. I will find out, and I will make them pay.
A knock at the door startled her. She went back into the hallway, and
could make out a shape through the translucent glass pane in the door.
"Who's there?" she called.
"It's me, Paula, open the damn door." Another knock, impatient this
time. "Look, I know you're mad at me, but-"
Kate opened the door and found a man staring up at her in surprise. "Who
the hell are you?"
"My name is Kate," she said. "What's yours?"
"Gordy Boothe, I-wait a minute. What are you doing in Paula's trailer?
Where's Paula?" He craned his head to look around her. "Paula?"
She stepped outside and closed the door behind her. "How well did you
know Paula Pawlowski, Mr. Boothe?"
"What?" Now he was staring down at her in bafflement and growing anger.
"Look, what the hell is this? Where's Paula? Paula!" He banged on the
door with his fist. "Paula, open this door!"
"Mr. Boothe. Mr. Boothe!" She put a hand on his arm. She won't hear you.
She's not here."
"What do you mean, she's not here? She just got home last night; I drove
her home from the Lodge."
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"Really," Kate said. "What time was that?"
"I don't know, eleven, eleven-thirty."
"Did you stay with her?"
"No." He hadn't been happy about it, either, and he still wasn't. "She
wouldn't let me. She said she'd had this great idea, and she wanted to
work on it before she lost it." He'd been watching Kate's expression. He
was a pleasant-faced man in his mid-fifties, about five-ten, with a bald
spot that made him look like he was tonsured and a body that looked like
it had once played team sports in a desperate battle to stave off a
middle-aged spread. "Look, Miss-what did you say your name was?-what's
going on here? Who are you?"
"Were you and Paula close, Mr. Boothe?" Kate looked behind him and saw
the picnic table with two benches on either side of it. She moved toward
it, and he followed her.
"We had a relationship, sort of," he said. "We were good friends."
"Which was it, were you friends or lovers?"
He was starting to ge
t angry. "Look, I don't know what business that is
of yours. Look here, what's-" His face paled, and the stuffing went out
of him so suddenly that he collapsed on the nearest picnic bench. "Did
you say "was'?"
"I'm sorry to tell you this, Mr. Boothe. Your friend met with an
accident last night."
He uttered a low groan. "A bear? Was it a bear?"
"Why do you say that?"
"Because we heard one crashing through the bushes when I dropped her off
last night. Is she okay? Where is she? Is she at the hospital?" He rose
to his feet.
Kate pulled him back down. "Mr. Boothe, I'm sorry to have to tell you
this, but I'm afraid Paula is dead."
He stared at her, his face very white. And then he burst into tears.
He was a history teacher at Ahtna High School and the coach for both the
girls' and boys' volleyball teams. He'd
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met Paula three years before, when she came to him for help with some
historical research for her novel, and they'd had an on-again, off-again
relationship since. He was supposed to have met her at the airport when
she flew in from Fairbanks the day before, with dinner at the Lodge to
follow, and the rest of the night at his house, but their plans had gone
awry when he'd been late getting back from a school trip to Kuik, and
she had come up with her brilliant idea. "If I'd insisted she come home
with me, she'd still be alive," he said, blowing his nose. Fresh tears
started down his face. "I should have made her come with me. Damn it!"
He thumped the picnic table in sudden rage. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!"
Paula hadn't had any enemies, he said. She had lived out here because
the rent was a third of what it was in town. Her parents were dead, and
she'd been an only child. Where had she come from originally? He thought
Chicago. Or maybe it was Cincinnati, he wasn't sure. She'd moved up with
her mother twelve years before, and supported herself by writing grant
applications for nonprofit corporations and hiring herself out to do
research.
"Mr. Boothe, did she say or do anything last night in any way out of the
ordinary?"
He shook his head. "No. Nothing."
"What was this new idea she had that she wanted to work on?"
He blew his nose again. "She'd found a story about a murder back in,
god, I don't know, 1919 or something. One of the girls in one of the
hook shops in Niniltna, back when it was party town for the Kanuyaq
Copper Mine. She was all excited about how she could work it into her
novel. She couldn't wait to get started." He sat, knees splayed, hands
dangling between them, chin sunk on his chest.
"Anything else?"
He stared at the ground, oblivious to the afternoon growing cooler
around them, looking unutterably weary. "She
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was so nice. And so smart. And she read." He looked up. "Books," he said.
"I know."
"She liked to jitterbug. Did you know that?"
"No. I didn't know that."
"She was good at it, too. Danced me right off the floor more than once.
When I had to chaperon a school dance, Paula would come and we would
dance, and the kids would stand around in a circle and clap and yell and
whistle." He smiled at the memory. It didn't last. "There'll never be
anyone else for me. Paula was it. At my age, you just don't meet a lot
of women you like." He raised his head, blinking away tears, and saw her
watching him. "You're still young. You think you've got all the time in
the world. Well, you don't." He got up and walked a few steps toward the
battered Toyota Land Cruiser parked next to Tony's Escort. He stopped
halfway there and wheeled around. "You're sure?" he said. "You're sure
she's dead?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Boothe."
His shoulders sagged. "Where is she?"
"An autopsy is required in every incidence of violent death in the state
of Alaska."
"Can I have her back, afterward? I'd like to see her buried, if I may."
"I'll tell Chief Hazen."
"Thank you. Thank you for everything. You've been very kind." When the
Toyota had backed halfway down the driveway, he stopped and rolled down
the window. "She said she'd married well!"
"Who had?"
"The hooker! Paula said she'd married well! That's all I remember, though!"
"Thanks!"
He waved and rolled the window back up.
Kate sat where she was for a good ten minutes after the sound of the
engine had faded away. Gordy Boothe must
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have walked into the restaurant the night before five minutes after Kate
had walked out. Like him, she wished he'd talked Paula into staying with
him, or that he had stayed at the trailer with her.
It was early afternoon, about four o'clock. She ought to go back into
town and catch a ride of some kind to Niniltna. Mutt wasn't back from
lunch yet. She thought of the grizzly Gordy Boothe had heard in the
bushes the night before, and hoped Mutt didn't bring it back with her.
She could have called Mutt, but she didn't. She wasn't ready to go back
to town yet, to be around people yet. She went back into the trailer and
into the bedroom and took a second look at Helm. Kid puts on a weird
helmet, acquires another personality; father beats him with a stick
until he learns how to get out of its way: he goes to war at the head of
an army and kicks serious enemy ass. She was immersed from the first
page, and didn't hear the quiet purr of an approaching engine. She
didn't even hear the door open. The Airstream, sitting on a solid
foundation of cement blocks, didn't shift. The hydraulic hinge slammed
the door closed though, and Kate looked up from where she was sitting on
the floor, back to the bookshelf, startled but not quick enough. The
tiny hallway was so short that the bedroom could be reached in one long
step. There was a creak of wood over her head, and Kate looked up to see
the five- shelf bookshelf and all its books come crashing down on her.
Kenny Hazen dropped Jim Chopin at the Ahtna airport, and Jim would have
been in Tok by now if he hadn't discovered a minute trace of oil on the
hose leading from the engine to the oil pan. So he had to track down a
new hose, and that took time, but it wasn't like he was in a hurry.
There wasn't a lot going on back at the ranch. Well, except for Steve
Glatter trying to kill his wife, Barbara, and Terry Moon when he caught
them parked on a very short dead
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end road a mile away from the turnoff of the Glatter homestead, clearly
visible from the highway. If somebody had to do the nasty, why couldn't
they practice a little discretion?
It would make his life a lot easier. As it was, Terry was in the
hospital, Barbara had retained an attorney, and Steve was in jail on the
charge of assault in the third degree with the handle off a meat
grinder. Terry wasn't all that beat up, and the Glatters had three minor
children. Assault in the third was only a Class-A felony. Jim would have
downgraded it to assault in the fourth or even reckless endangerment if
he'd tho
ught he could have gotten away with it, but the magistrate on
duty that day had been partying late the night before at the Do Drop
and, as a consequence, had been in a severe mood the following morning.
It was six o'clock by the time he finished the job. It wasn't one a
licensed A&P mechanic would have to sign off on, so all he had to do was
wash his hands and he was halfway home.
Still. It wouldn't hurt to drive out to Paula Pawlowski's trailer, which
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead Page 19
