A Cold Day for Murder

by Dana Stabenow

  Drawing up outside the Roadhouse was a bright yellow D-9 Caterpillar tractor. It had tracks over two feet wide and weighed about thirty tons and, with its 250-horsepower engine, had a top speed of six to seven miles an hour. Six to seven miles an hour pushing Mt. St. Elias in front of it, that is. It was standard operating equipment for excavations on the TransAlaska Pipeline. Mac Devlin had tried to get a permit to operate one in the Park. His application had been rejected with a reply so blistering that he had immediately burned it, and it took Dan O’Brian three whole days to get his hands on a copy out of Juneau so he could post it on the Trading Post bulletin board in Niniltna for the enjoyment of all.

  The D-9 in front of the Roadhouse, wearing the proud insignia of the Alyeska Pipeline Service Corporation and apparently going every six or seven miles of its top speed, rumbled down the road, knocked over a scrub spruce, squashed Bernie’s blueberry patch flat and lurched over the snow berm at the side of the parking lot, where, surrounded by open space for the first time in fifty miles, it became confused and started going around in a circle. The right side of the enormous blade sideswiped a parked truck, caving in the passenger side door, ripping off the front bumper and puncturing the left front tire. Shrieks were heard from beneath the truck’s canopy. The door of the canopy swung up and a disheveled Betty Jorgensen dropped out of the back of the truck, followed by an equally disheveled Dandy Mike hauling up his pants. There was a furious yell from one of the onlookers. Bernie winced and groaned.

  “Bill Jorgensen?” Kate said sympathetically, and Bernie nodded in a hopeless sort of way.

  When the Cat finally ground to a halt, the doors on both sides of the cab popped open as if propelled by a small explosion. Two men fell out into the parking lot. One of them regained his feet; the other stayed on his hands and knees. Both of them were making a straight line for the Roadhouse. Kate and Bernie turned as one to watch the door. The stampede of bar patrons reversed course, giving plenty of house room to the two Cat skinners, as the one on his feet was brandishing a pistol.

  “Probably isn’t loaded,” Bernie remarked.

  “I wanna tequila sunrise and I want it now,” the gunman said loudly, and shot a round into the roof for emphasis.

  “Probably not,” Kate agreed.

  Bernie frowned at her repressively before he turned to address the gunslinger. “Looks as if you’ve already had a few, friend.”

  The man peered at him through an alcoholic fog. “You Bernie?”

  “The same.”

  The gunman surveyed the silent, terrified crowd and said plaintively, “What the fuck you running here, Bernie, a A.A. meeting? Gimme a drink!”

  Bernie said, still in that flat, calm voice, “You’ve had a few too many already, friend.”

  The gunslinger swung around to look at his companion, who by now was up off all fours and peering owlishly over the head of an inflatable rubber doll. The doll had long blond hair and amazing proportions, and he clutched her firmly to his breast. “You hear that, Otis?” the man with the gun demanded. “Man says we can’t have a drink.”

  Otis blinked once, slowly, and burst into tears.

  The gunslinger turned back to wave his gun accusingly under Bernie’s nose. “See that?” he demanded. “You made Otis cry! I orta shootcha!” He swayed closer and whispered confidentially, “Can’t we have just one for the road? Otherwise Otis is gonna cry all the way home, and I just can’t stand it.”

  Kate quivered and Bernie’s hand clamped down hard on her wrist. “Nope. Not even one. Sorry.”

  The gunslinger scratched his head with the pistol barrel. “Well, shit.” He stood in silence for a moment, his gaze wandering around the bar, taking in the crowd gathered in groups next to the wall like so many rabbits frozen by a car’s headlights, noses twitching, eyes staring, afraid to move in any direction for fear of being run over or, in this instance, shot. The gunman surveyed them with a gathering disapproval. He leaned toward Bernie again and said in a whisper loud enough to be heard in Niniltna, “Listen, Bern ole buddy, no offense, but this don’t look like a fun party anyway. We—Otis, stop that goddam bawling or I’ll shoot your girlfriend.”

  Otis sobbed harder. Over the sobbing Kate heard a deep whap-whap-whap sound growing steadily louder outside the Roadhouse. She looked at Bernie out of the corner of one eye and saw him give a tiny nod.

  The noise got louder and louder until the building was vibrating on its foundations and even Otis could hear it. There was another concerted rush for the outdoors. Kate turned toward the window in time to see a Bell Jet Ranger touch down next to the D-9 Cat.

  “It’s the trooper from Tok!” someone yelled, followed by a mixed chorus of cheers and boos. The roar of the helicopter’s engine wound down to a high-pitched whine and the blades slowed. The door of the machine opened slowly.

  “Behold,” Kate cried, her low, raspy voice joyous, “the god in the machine!” Bernie gave her a vicious pinch and she tried to pull herself together.

  Jim Chopin had been hired by the Alaska State Troopers before the height requirement was eliminated, and he got out of his helicopter, and kept coming out, and kept coming out, and kept coming out, until all of his five-foot-twenty-two-inch height was on the ground and upright. If there had been a weight requirement he would have passed that, too. As more than one Park denizen could testify, all two hundred and sixty pounds of him was muscle. As Billy Mike had been heard to say, “When Jim Chopin gets done climbing out of that helicopter, you know The Law has arrived.”

  The trooper wore a dark blue jacket over a light blue uniform shirt and dark blue pants with a gold stripe running up the outside seam of each leg. A flat-brimmed hat with a round crown sat low over his forehead, and the gold cord tied round the crown came to rest in two tassels centered perfectly over his nose. He wore a pistol in a black leather holster strapped to his right hip. He moved slowly, surely, with a regal presence so self-assured it was almost but not quite arrogant.

  He strode through the door of the Roadhouse as if he owned the earth. The pipeliner with the pistol swung his arm in a perfect arc, so that the muzzle of the pistol came to rest on the trooper’s forehead, directly between his eyes, centered perfectly below the two gold tassels.

  Every eye, be it fascinated, horrified or approving, was fixed on the scene with equal intensity. For a moment no one moved or spoke. Then the trooper’s deep, calm voice came clearly to them all. Directing his level gaze past the pistol and pistol holder, he addressed Bernie in a deep, calm voice. “What seems to be the problem here?”

  There was one more moment of tense silence, and then the pipeliner sighed. “Oh fuck. It’s Chopper Jim.”

  “Who?” Otis said.

  “The goddam trooper, you drunken bum. Now what’re we gonna do?”

  The trooper stood motionless. The gunslinger’s eyebrows met in a single busy bar above his eyes, which were unfocused; he was intent on the mental working out of some weighty problem. At last he leaned toward the trooper, the pressure of the gun muzzle against the trooper’s forehead indenting the flesh, and said, “Listen, Chopper, how many years’m I gonna get for pulling a gun on you? ’Cause, if it’s life, I might’s well shootchya, dontchya think?”

  The trooper’s voice was deep and soothing. “I don’t know, Davey, I think we could get it down to ten years or so, with time off for good behavior.”

  The gunslinger considered this. “Would they put me in with Otis?”

  The trooper shrugged as much as he thought wise with a pistol at his head. “Why not?”

  “You hear that, Otis? Three squares and a bed and no more welding outside at fucking ten below.”

  Otis plucked at Davey’s sleeve and whispered. “Oh. Chopper, Otis wants to know if he can bring Cherry there with him.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Such a deal.” Davey dropped his arm, tossed the trooper his pistol and a blinding smile. “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,” he added, and barfed his dinner, a
fifth of Absolut, three quarts of popcorn and two light beers down the front of the trooper’s immaculate uniform pants.

  About that time half a dozen Alyeska Pipeline security guards roared up on snow machines and were all over the Roadhouse like a swarm of angry bees. They were full of energy in spite of their all-afternoon cross-country excursion, and it was obvious that the only thing standing between the two prisoners and a distillation of some of that energy was Chopper Jim’s calm, level gaze. The two pipeliners, drunk but not entirely stupid, themselves demonstrated a reverence for the Alaska Department of Public Safety in general and a touching affection for this representative in particular. It became necessary for them to be restrained; indeed, they displayed a distressing tendency to grasp at Chopper’s Jim’s large frame with hands, arms, legs and teeth as they were being carried through the door by the Alyeska guards.

  At the end of the third run at the door the gunman shouted, “You’ll never take me alive, copper!” which effectively destroyed the rest of Kate’s gravity, and even Bernie turned away with his lips twitching. He tossed the trooper a damp towel and set up a round of drinks on the house. Everyone rushed for the bar, to knock theirs back and brag about how each of them had single-handedly disarmed the four, no, seven, wait, wasn’t it twelve armed desperadoes who had taken a hundred people hostage in Bernie’s Roadhouse on this memorable evening. Chopper Jim mopped off his uniform and accepted a ginger ale.

  “This must be the most fun those rent-a-cops have had since Pump Eight blew up,” Kate said to Jim Chopin.

  “Hello, Kate,” he said, still calm, hitching his gun belt up a notch over his hips, superbly unconcerned with the damp stains left on his uniform pants. “Haven’t seen you this far inside the Park in a while.”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “I know.”

  She said involuntarily, “How the hell could you know?”

  “I do come into contact with a few members of Alaska’s law enforcement community from time to time.” He grinned. Chopper Jim had a grin like a shark, wide, white and predatory, and knowing eyes that saw far too much. They had one effect on offenders of the law, and a completely different one on the opposite sex.

  Kate stared at that grin and suddenly remembered she was of the opposite sex herself. “Er, of course,” she said, giving herself a mental kick. I’m older than this, she reminded herself sternly.

  Chopper Jim scratched Mutt’s head with caressing fingers. She flattened her ears and wagged her tail slavishly. Make that the opposite sex of any species. “Found anything yet?” he said casually.

  She hesitated. “Nothing for you to act on,” she said cautiously. “Some interesting coincidences.”

  “Want to share?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “If you need help—”

  “Katya!” Kate looked around and was overrun by what at first glimpse seemed to be a smaller, pudgier and younger version of herself. “Katya, why didn’t you tell me you were here? Why didn’t you come find me?”

  “I thought I had, Xenia,” Kate said, chuckling at her cousin’s overwhelming enthusiasm, and put a little on her guard as well. “Let’s move to a table so we can talk. Nice seeing you, Jim.”

  Xenia looked up at the big trooper from beneath long lashes and blushed. “Hi, Jim.”

  The trooper touched the brim of his hat with two fingers. “Xenia.”

  Xenia tossed her hair over her shoulders and said, still looking at him from beneath her lashes, “You keep saying you’ll come over to my house to visit the next time you’re in Niniltna, Jim, but you never do. How come?”

  The trooper looked her over from head to toe, slowly and carefully and thoroughly, the gaze of an experienced investigator trained to miss not the smallest detail. Sylvester looked at Tweety Bird that way. Hell, Kate thought, Atilla the Hun had looked at Rome that way. Xenia’s blush became even rosier. “How old are you now, Xenia?” the trooper said.

  “Not old enough,” Kate said, pushing between them. “Good-bye, Jim.” She took her cousin’s elbow and steered her toward a vacant table on the other side of the room.

  Xenia was dragging her feet, looking over her shoulder, and when Kate looked back Chopper Jim’s teeth flashed again and he touched the brim of his hat. “Snap out of it, girl,” Kate muttered to her cousin out of one corner of her mouth. “It’s not for nothing they call Jim Chopin the Father of the Park.”

  They were barely seated before Xenia, her mood shifting mercurially, said in an urgent undertone, “Katya, could you get me a job in town?”

  “I don’t know,” her cousin said, her eyes fixed on the girl’s face. “What can you do?”

  “Anything,” Xenia said eagerly. “I can type, I can file, I got my high school diploma this year.”

  “Why this sudden urge to vacate the premises?”

  “I want to get away,” the younger girl said passionately. “I want to get out of this place. I want to go where there are cars and movies and restaurants and other kinds of people—”

  “Like, maybe, men in uniform,” Kate said, smiling a little.

  Xenia colored and said defiantly, “Yes, anyone that isn’t a dumb Native.”

  “Hold it now—”

  “I don’t care! If they aren’t dumb, they’re drunk, and if they’re drunk they hurt people, they even—” She caught Kate’s eyes and stopped suddenly. “I want to get away,” she said in a plaintive voice.

  The girl was young and fresh-faced and would have been pretty but for her sulky eyes and the petulant droop to her lower lip. “I don’t know that just wanting to get away is the best reason for moving to town,” Kate said slowly.

  “You’ve seen emaa, haven’t you?” Xenia said with quick suspicion. Kate nodded, and Xenia said with a bitterness that alarmed her cousin, “I knew it! I knew she’d get to you first and turn you against me and ruin my life! She wants me to stay here and learn how to weave baskets and carve ivory and spin qiviut and die of boredom! I hate her! I hate you!” Kate tried to say something and Xenia rushed on. “It’s all so easy for you, you made it out, you went to school, you worked in town, you have a choice! Old Snow White, that’s what we call you in the village! And now I’m stuck here in this—”

  “Xenia!” Kate’s voice was like the crack of a whip, and Xenia jumped and gulped back tears. “First of all, emaa didn’t turn me against you. She talked to me, and yes, she wants me to convince you not to go to town.” She held up one hand, palm out. “I didn’t say I would.”

  Xenia’s woeful face brightened at once. “Then you will help me! Oh, Katya, I knew I could count on you, I knew you would make everything right, when can I go?”

  “Hold it! I didn’t say I wouldn’t try to talk you out of leaving, either.” The girl opened her mouth to protest and Kate said sternly, “Let me finish, please.” She stared the girl into sullen silence. “I want you to think about what you’re doing, Xenia. I want you to think about what you’ll be leaving behind. You think it’s nothing. I tell you it can be everything. Here, you’re surrounded by family and friends, good people you’ve known all your life, good people who know you, people you can turn to when you’re in trouble, people who are always there for your birthday and Christmas and New Year’s.” Kate sat back in her chair and frowned at her folded hands. “It’s different in Anchorage, Xenia. A lot different. In Anchorage you’d be on your own, and it can be very lonely in a big city after living in the bush.”

  “I don’t care, I—”

  “The kind of job you’re qualified for doesn’t pay much and you won’t have a lot of money, and being in a city without money is like being hungry in the middle of a herd of caribou without a rifle.”

  “It doesn’t matter, at least I—”

  “You won’t be able to buy a car until you save up,” Kate said inexorably. “And you’ll probably have to share an apartment, which means you’ll be thrown in at close quarters with someone you’ve never seen before in your life, maybe so
me Outsider who thinks Alaska Natives are as dumb as you do.” Her raspy voice was cutting, and her cousin had the grace to look ashamed. “They’ll make fun of you because you want to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s in January the Russian Orthodox way. Others will resent you because you’re a Native and you get something for what they think is nothing, ANCSA money and treatment at ANS just for being an Alaska Indian. Some of them will even ask you, and in front of other people, too, why you aren’t down on Fourth Avenue with the rest of your relatives.”

  “I don’t care, Katya,” Xenia said in a small voice to the tabletop. “I just want out.”

  Kate searched her face for a long moment. “All right,” she said at last. “Think over what I’ve said for a week or so. If you still feel the same way, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Oh, Katya, thank you! I knew you’d come through for me!”

  “I haven’t done anything yet,” Kate said dryly. “In the meantime there is something you can do for me.”

  “What?”

  “Emaa tells me you’ve been seeing one of the park rangers.”

  Prepared for a strong reaction, Kate was nevertheless shocked by the result of her question. The color drained out of Xenia’s face, her body slackened and she swayed in her chair as if she were going to slide down to the sawdust-covered floor. Kate reached out quickly to steady her, but the girl waved her off with one shaking hand. “I’m all right,” she muttered, avoiding her cousin’s eyes.

  “So you were seeing him,” Kate said. “Mark Miller.”

  “Yes.” The noise in the bar almost drowned out the girl’s nearly inaudible response. She sat still as a parka squirrel scenting a fox.

  Kate looked at her bent head, frowning. “Was it…serious?”

  There was a brief silence. “I thought so,” the girl said, seeming to pick her words with great care. “He said he loved me, that he was going to marry me and take me away from here.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”