His head ached dully and continuously, but Jim was too busy to give it much thought. Cal Kemper strolled into the office an hour before the DC-3 was scheduled to take off, just in time to do a walk-around and meet the passengers with whom he'd be spending the better part of the next two weeks. "Little gal I found up to the laundromat just didn't want to turn loose of me," he said, grinning at Jim and Baird. "Can't say as I blame her." "I thought you were married," Baird said crankily.
Kemper met the remark with an amazed stare. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"Well, you're late, anyway," Baird said. "Goddamn prima donna pilots."
Unflustered by this slur on his character, Cal strolled out again.
Ralph Whitmore, five feet tall when he wore high heeled boots, which he probably did in and out of bed, brought the Cessna back from dumping off the English fishermen, and was not pleased when he was instructed to take a load of commercial fishermen to Toksook Bay. "Drunk or sober?" he demanded, and swore ripely at the answer. He swept off his Seahawks baseball cap to reveal a head as bald as an egg, rubbed fiercely at his scalp, and yanked the cap on again, all the better to glare at Jim and Baird impartially from beneath the brim. "If one of those sonsabitches barfs in the plane, I ain't cleaning it up!"
Baird jerked a thumb at Jim. "That's what we got him for." Oh joy, Jim thought.
"All right, then," Whitmore said, and stamped out again.
"Thank you," Jim said.
"That's why you get the big bucks," Baird said, slapping him on the back hard enough to jar his tender head.
Jim stifled a groan, and remembered he still didn't know how big those big bucks were. His heart skipped a beat and he stood up straight. He might not know what he was getting paid, but he sure remembered the last time the topic came up, sitting in the pickup truck next to that fisherman on the drive into Bering. What was his name?
Suddenly it became very important to remember the fisherman's name. He backed up, tripped over the coffee table and sat down hard on the couch.
Mike Mason. That was the fisherman's name, Mike Mason. Newly married, if the shine on the wedding ring and the way he fiddled with it was anything to go by.
Jim felt a wave of relief sweep over him. It was all he could remember, but it was more than he could remember lying in that hospital bed. Maybe the docs were right. Maybe he'd remember everything in time. The sooner the better. It was unnerving to watch people walk in and out of the hangar and wonder if he'd already met them. If he'd met them thirty-six hours before. If one of them had been holding a gun when he had.
The Here sat idle for all of four hours, before a local builder under threat of legal action rushed in and said he absolutely positively had to get a backhoe, a bulldozer and a dump truck to St. Mary's overnight.
Baird smiled sweetly and allowed as how it could be done. The builder interpreted the smile correctly and reached for his checkbook.
At six o'clock a short man with very white skin who looked like a hairy leprechaun appeared on the apron. Baird handled his freight request personally, a wooden crate to be shipped to Anchorage the next day, to a gift shop on Fourth Avenue.
Jim got to the office as the bill of lading was signed and money was changing hands. "I'm going to grab some grub, okay?"
Baird grunted without looking up from counting out twenty-dollar bills, but the man twisted around in his chair. When he saw Jim, his white face went even whiter.
"Hi." Jim waited, curious at the expression on the leprechaun's face.
The man nodded once, stiffly, but said nothing.
"Okay if I take the truck up town?" Jim said to Baird. "I want to grab some dinner, and I don't want another sandwich."
"Go ahead."
"I'll be an hour."
"Don't be more."
Jim climbed into the orange truck and started it up with the nagging feeling that he was leaving something important undone, or behind. Why had the man in Baird's office looked so frightened?
He hated having no memory of what had happened to him. A cop with a lousy memory for faces was a cop who took early retirement, usually with disability pay. Since he'd woken up from his attack, it seemed that every face he saw had a reaction to his own that he should have understood, and couldn't.
He slammed the truck into drive and peeled out. It was noisy and only served to make him feel childish. Plus, he'd bet Baird would have something to say about the ten feet of rubber he'd left behind on the tarmac.
He drove the three miles to town in a black mood and pulled up in front of the first restaurant he saw, the Klondike Cafe. There was one seat left at the counter. He ordered coffee and the meat loaf special, with extra gravy, and stolidly ate his way through everything. He wasn't really that hungry, but he knew he had to eat if he wanted to be well enough to chase bad guys.
He mopped up the plate with the last of his dinner roll and ordered a piece of cherry pie, a la mode. He got a check and a refill on the coffee at the same time. The waitress, a plump young woman with flirtatious black eyes, hovered until he looked up. "Any time you're ready," she said, smiling. She was tapping the check, but the check wasn't what was on her mind.
He drew breath for a graceful exit when the bell on the door jangled violently. Everyone looked around at the man standing there, who walked rapidly across to a table where a trooper was sitting. Jim hadn't even seen her come in, which showed how much he was slipping. Her nametag read M. Zarr. The same one who had signed off on the body in the hangar his first night on the job. She was listening intently to the man talking rapidly to her in a low voice. When he was done, she asked a question. He nodded.
The trooper looked around, ignoring all the stares, and found the waitress. "Sophie? I've got to go. Put this on my tab, will you?"
"No problem, Mary," Jim's waitress said.
The trooper pushed back her half-empty plate, reached for her hat and stood up. She was five-six, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds, and moved well, as if she worked out.
She was putting on her hat when she passed Jim. Her eyes widened and he thought she was going to say something. She didn't, though, and the bell jangled again when she followed the man outside. They were joined by another man, and stood talking for a few moments. The trooper and the first man went off, while the second man came into the cafe and sat down heavily next to Jim.
Sophie was right there with a mug and the pot, and he thanked her. She waited until after his first swallow before saying, "What's going on, Emil?" He cradled the cup between his hands as if they were cold. "Alice Chevak is dead."
A ripple of comment ran around the little cafe, and then stilled, so that for a moment there was no sound at all except for the second pot of coffee filling on the coffee machine.
"How?" Sophie said finally. "Was it an accident?"
Emil looked down at the coffee cup in his hands as if he couldn't imagine how it got there, and shoved it away. "No. Somebody beat on her.
Bad. Real bad. Looks like she died of it. Oscar found her body floating in Brown Slough."
Alice Chevak, Jim thought. Alice Chevak, where had he heard that name.
Oh, he thought. No.
Alice Chevak.
Stephanie's mother.
And Kate's friend.
He stood up, threw a twenty on the counter, avoided Sophie's inviting eye and left without waiting for change.
Outside, he stood blinking in the sunlight, wondering what to do next.
All Zarr knew was that he'd been shot, by whom he said he didn't know.
If he could have shown his badge, it would have been easy enough to drop in to exchange professional courtesies and hear all about the local homicide. If he went in without it, if she was even halfway competent Zarr would wonder at his curiosity, would ask how he'd known the victim, and then he'd have to tell her who Kate was. If Zarr didn't believe him, she could add him to the list marked
"Suspects." He would have.
The Fibbies might have told her who he was. She might
have been in the hospital room that morning, although along with everything else he couldn't remember her, and Kate hadn't mentioned it.
Even if she knew who he was, finding the brutal murderer of a local woman would take precedence over an operation with, so far as the trooper knew, no blood on it yet. He thought of Alexei Burianovich, alias Alex Burinin. No obvious deliberately spilled blood, anyway.
Reluctantly, he decided there was nothing he could do.
Other than tell Kate of her friend's death.
Kate came awake in a rush, heart pounding so loudly in her ears that she could hear nothing else. A great dark bulk was stooping over her, and instantly she was back in the clearing in front of the hunting lodge, her hands bound, Jack face down with a bullet in his back, Eberhard unbuckling her jeans.
She felt hands on her shoulders and struggled against them. "Mutt! To me! Mutt!"
There was a whine, a soft yip.
"Kate!"
She felt herself shaken once, hard. The drumming in her ears subsided.
The stooping hulk reduced in size, became Jim Chopin, sitting on the bed next to her, holding her shoulders in a firm grip. "Kate?"
"Jim?"
"You okay?"
She wrenched her shoulders out of his hands. "I'm fine. What the hell do you think you're doing?" She looked at her watch. "It's not midnight yet, what are you doing here?" There was something about the quality of his silence that brought her to full alert. "What? What is it, Jim?" A long sigh was her reply. "Kate," he said. "Oh hell. I don't know how to tell you this." A muffled curse. "I don't want to have to."
"What? Mutt? Is Mutt all right?" She looked down and was immeasurably relieved to see Mutt sitting there, worried yellow eyes fixed on Kate's face. She stretched out a hand. Mutt's rough silk head was a tactile reassurance to her skin, and her heart steadied. She looked back at Jim.
"Alice Chevak is dead," he said.
She blinked. "What?"
"Alice Chevak is dead," he repeated.
"Baloney," Kate said. She even gave a little laugh. "I just had dinner with Alice and her whole family last night. She's not dead. You've made some kind of mistake, she's--"
"Kate."
She looked up and met his eyes. "Jim, look, I know you think--"
"Alice Chevak is dead."
There was a long silence.
"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you sooner, but when I got back from dinner the Cessna was in and needed cleaning, and I just now--" "How?" Kate said thinly.
"What?"
"How did it happen?"
"They found Alice's body floating in Brown Slough." He stopped, and she said, "What else?"
"Kate--"
"What else?"
Reluctantly--if he didn't tell her she would find out on her own--he said, "They're saying she'd been hit. A lot. And hard." Kate sat very still. She thought about Alice, plump and cheerful behind her nameplate at the bank. She thought of Alice, bustling about the kitchen of her home, helping her mother with dinner, making sure her grandfather got his coffee just how he liked it, harrying her daughter from her books into bed. She thought of Alice, offering the hospitality of her home to a classmate she hadn't seen for thirteen years.
She thought of Alice, thrilled at the thought of helping in a real live investigation. Alice, who had asked no questions, had only wanted to help out a friend.
"I am the angel of death," Kate said softly.
"What?"
"I get people killed."
"Kate, stop it."
"Abel."
"Kate--"
"Emaa."
"Kate, no--"
"Jack."
"Kate, don't--"
"And now Alice. I am the angel of death."
"Kate!" He shook her again, hard.
She fought him, shoving him away or trying to. He wouldn't let go.
"Kate, you didn't beat up Alice, you didn't have anything to do with her death. Stop this, now, damn it, knock it off!"
She was quick and strong and slippery, and his head hurt abominably.
Unable to subdue her any other way, he pushed her down on the bunk and lay on top of her. "Just settle down, damn it, Kate."
She tried once more to pull free, and couldn't.
She broke then. She broke quickly and she broke completely, sobs welling up from some bottomless subterranean pool, raw, painful sounds that hurt him who heard them as much as her who suffered them. She lay beneath him, helpless, out of control, as all the tears she hadn't wept over Jack's death overflowed in a deluge that threatened to drown them both.
"I couldn't even scream because they would have heard me," she said, gasping. "They would have heard me, and killed me, too. And I was careless." Her fist thumped his shoulder as hard as it could, which was pretty hard.
"Hush now," he said. He slid his hands under her and gathered her up, rocking her. "It's all right. It's all right, Kate."
"No, it isn't. It never will be again." She was barely aware of what she was saying. "I wasn't paying attention. Two people were dead, what was I thinking? I wasn't thinking. Jack was going to take early retirement and move to the homestead. He was happy. I was happy. I was scared, but I was happy. Two people were already dead and there were a couple of homicidal maniacs on the loose and I was too happy to be careful. How could I be so sloppy?" She hit him again. "How could I be so careless?"
She hit him a third time, a fourth, a fifth. "How could I be so stupid!"
He caught her hands and pressed them against the mattress. "Hush now," he said, helpless to say anything else, determined only to comfort, only to soothe. "It's okay, I'm right here. I'm right here, and everything's going to be all right."
"I am the angel of death," she said in a kind of stunned mumble, tears halting at last, to leave her drained and exhausted. "I don't pay attention, and I get people killed. I got Alice killed."
He held her because there was nothing else he could do for her. "Shhh," he said, "there now, everything will be all right. It's okay, Kate, it's all right."
He held her, he rubbed her back with gentle hands, he rocked her, and he told her everything would be all right over and over again, and presently he saw that she had fallen asleep. He gathered her close, tucked her head beneath his chin, and whispered, "It's all right now.
Everything will be all right now."
He closed his eyes against the insistent throbbing of his head, and followed her into oblivion.
When she resurfaced, minutes or hours later, she was still on the bed.
Jim's hands had relaxed their grip, and he had shifted u. lie next to her. He was big and warm and solid and alive. She turned her face into his throat His pulse beat strongly beneath her lips. He smelled like man.
She raised her head and kissed him.
Still mostly asleep but automatically attuned to the female body next to his, his hands slid around her waist He kissed her back. He was very good at it, and with an inarticulate murmur of pleasure she kissed him again, and again, soft, fugitive, luring kisses, nibbling at his lips, teasing him into kissing her back, retreating when he did so, responding when he pursued.
It had been so long, and he felt so good. She hooked one knee over his hip and urged him closer. She slid a stealthy hand down between his legs, pulled at his zipper, found the opening. He fit into her palm as if he'd been made for it.
His hands were busy, too, cupping her breasts, gently exploring the cleft between her legs, until--"What the hell? Kate?"
She didn't want to talk. She didn't want to think. All she wanted was to feel.
"Kate, wait a minute, I don't think--" Hands slid from her breasts and she whimpered and dragged them back. She kissed him again, tightened her hand, rolled to her back. He made a sound deep in his throat and came over her, settling in between her legs. "Oh yes," she said, the merest thread of sound, and pulled at his jeans. Her panties were already gone.
She felt him nudging at the entrance to her body, she felt how wet she was and how hard he was
and how ready they both were, and she arched up langourously, opening to him, inviting him in.
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 10 - Midnight Come Again Page 18
