“Amy?”
“Amy Huth. Cindy Bingley’s niece, came north last month from Minneapolis. Cindy asked Bernie if he’d take her on. She just started on Monday.” Kate shook her head. “Welcome to the Park.”
“Johnny?”
Kate nodded, her hackles looking every bit as stiff as Mutt’s. “I’ll get him.”
Johnny looked everywhere but at the bodies. In the interest of getting the kid away from the crime scene as soon as possible, Jim dispensed with any attempt to put him at ease. “You were here when they were killed?”
Johnny nodded. “I was in the bathroom.” He swallowed. “Or I’d be—”
Ruthlessly Jim cut him off. “Who was it?”
Johnny looked down. “I didn’t get a clear look at his face.”
Kate moved as if to say something, and Jim stopped her with a hard-eyed glance. “Back up a minute,” Jim said. “What were you doing here? Why weren’t you and Fitz at Auntie Vi’s swap and shop along with everyone else?”
“We’re behind on our science experiment for Ms. Doogan.” Johnny’s eyes slid away from the mounds beneath the blankets. “Fitz and me.”
“Huh,” Jim said. “So where’s Van? Isn’t she your lab partner, too?”
Johnny was silent. Again, Kate made as if to say something, and again Jim silenced her, “No one cares, Johnny, but I need to know exactly why you and Fitz came home.”
Johnny ducked his head. He was shivering, and Jim realized that they were standing outside in the middle of the night on the first Saturday in April. There was snow on the ground and their breath formed frost clouds in the air. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go inside.”
“No!” Johnny’s voice was loud and panicked.
“Inside the Roadhouse,” Jim said.
En route he said to Kate, “Who’s with Bernie?”
“Billy and the Grosdidiers.”
“He tell you what happened?”
“No, he wasn’t—he couldn’t—no. I talked to Old Sam, though, and Amy, a little. He said everyone came here after the swap and shop and that there was a hell of a party going on, television and jukebox up as loud as they would go, people dancing and then the belly dancers came in, and a bunch of Big Bumpers right on their heels, and the scene was pretty much pandemonium city.”
“And nobody heard the shots.”
“No. Nobody in the cabins this time of year, either, and nobody walking from the parking lot to the door at the right time, apparently.” She gave a tired shrug. “And come on, Jim, it’s the Park. I don’t think there’s a ten-year-old within two hundred miles who doesn’t carry. Who’s going to notice shots fired as anything out of the ordinary?”
“This was a nine-millimeter automatic, Kate, judging from the wounds.”
“Still,” she said.
He knew what she meant. “Ask Billy if he’d come watch the scene while we’re inside, would you?” He didn’t waste his breath asking her to stay behind while he interrogated Johnny.
Inside the bar, the television was blaring from one corner and the jukebox from another. Jim reached up to punch the TV’s OFF button and silenced Big and Rich’s rap, rock and roll paean to country music by the simple expedient of pulling the jukebox’s plug. He tossed his cap on the bar and unzipped his coat. “Take a pew, kid.”
This was the first time Johnny had been in a bar, and in spite of the circumstances he was curious. “Smells kind of sour in here.”
“Years of people upchucking beer on the floor will do that to a room.”
Kate came in, kicking the ice from her Sorels, followed by Mutt. She shed parka and mitts and went behind the bar. Johnny hitched his stool closer and accepted the Coke Kate poured, but shook his head at the bag of peanuts. She raised an eyebrow at Jim. He would have sold his soul for a beer, but he saw no sleep in his immediate future and alcohol wouldn’t help. “Water’d be good.”
She poured two tall with ice and wedges of lime, and hooked Bernie’s usual behind-the-bar stool with one foot and hoisted herself up. Mutt came around to stand beside her, looking up with expectant ears, and Kate tore open a package of beef jerky. Mutt accepted it as no less than her due and retired to the end of the bar.
Jim let Johnny swallow his first pull before he said, “Okay, kid. You and Fitz left the swap and shop and came home. How come?”
Johnny ducked his head, and even in the dim light of the Roadhouse, Jim could see color creeping up his neck. He mumbled something into his Coke.
“What?”
Johnny glanced at Kate and then quickly away.
Kate looked resigned. “Were you watching the X-rated channels again?”
Johnny’s head shot up and he stared at her, open-mouthed.
“Oh, you thought it was some big secret?” To Jim she said, “Bernie got satellite television last year. He blocked the porn channels on the living room TV but not the bedroom TV, so the kids sneak up there to watch whenever the grown-ups are out of the house. I can’t prove, it, but I think Fitz was charging admission.” She gave Johnny a pointed look. “And I think Johnny sold the tickets.” She looked back at Jim. “I asked Bernie to do something about it, but I guess he hasn’t gotten around to it yet.”
The painful red color had crept up to Johnny’s hairline. He mumbled something else into his Coke.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Kate said.
Johnny, face redder than ever, said in only a slightly louder voice, “I hate living with a detective.”
In spite of the horrific circumstances, Jim had a hard time keeping his face straight. “Was that it, kid? Not the science experiment?” Not the one assigned by Ms. Doogan, at any rate.
Johnny nodded, studiously avoiding Kate’s eye.
“And then Enid came home and caught you?”
Johnny nodded again. “She saw us sneak out of the swap and shop. She came home and caught us. She was mad. She yelled.”
“And then what?”
“And then she turned off the television and talked to us.” It was clear that Johnny had preferred the yelling.
But the talking would have been quieter. The master bedroom was on the second floor at the back of the house. Anyone coming in the front door, say someone there to relieve Bernie of his gold nugget collection, might have thought the house deserted, the residents up at Auntie Vi’s along with the rest of the Park rats.
He could have come in the front door which, like most Park doors, was never locked, walked into the living room and directly to the display case. “What happened next?” Jim said.
“We heard something.”
“Downstairs.”
Johnny nodded.
“What? What did you hear?”
“It was something breaking, like glass. That’s why Enid told us to be quiet. She said it didn’t sound like it was someone who was supposed to be there.”
Mistake, Jim thought. Enid should have screamed at the top of her lungs. Most intruders ran when detected. But then, most burglars didn’t kill. Hell, most burglars weren’t even armed. “Then what?”
“Then she made us sneak downstairs.” Johnny’s voice began to shake, and he shoved his glass away from him. “But he heard us.”
“What did he look like?”
Johnny knotted his hands together and stared at them fixedly. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see much. The lights weren’t on, except in that case with all the nuggets.”
“Tell me what you did see.”
“He was big.”
“Tall?”
Johnny hesitated. “Not tall, exactly, but big around.”
“Fat?”
Johnny shook his head. “Not fat.” He appealed to Kate. “Burly?”
She nodded, and Johnny looked relieved. “And lots of hair. Messy.”
“What color?”
“Dirty blond. Or maybe it just looked that way because it was dark and he had the light behind him.”
“So, white.”
“What?”
“Not Native.”<
br />
“Oh. No. White.” Johnny looked at Kate, uncertain. “Or mostly. I guess.”
“You never saw him before?”
Wretchedly, Johnny said, “I don’t know, Jim. I didn’t know him well enough to call him by name, that’s for sure. And everything happened so fast.”
“So you were coming down the stairs.”
Johnny nodded.
“Enid first?”
“And then Fitz, and then me. And then .. .” Johnny’s voice failed him.
Kate was a motionless presence on the other side of the bar. Jim kept his tone matter-of-fact. “How far down the stairs were you all when he came out of the living room?”
Johnny gulped back a sob and said, steadily enough to be understood, “Enid was at the bottom. She was holding Fitz’s hand. When the guy came out into the hallway, she shoved him in front of her and out the door.”
“The door was open?”
Johnny nodded.
“What happened then?”
Johnny’s voice lowered. “He—he didn’t see me, he went after Enid and Fitz. I started backing up, all the way to the landing. I crawled into the bathroom and locked the door and laid down in the bathtub.” His eyes filled. “I heard the shots. I should have done something, I should have—”
“You should have done exactly and precisely what you did,” Jim said firmly. “You got away. You’re alive. He would have killed you, too, Johnny, and what good would that have done?”
“But—”
“No buts,” Kate said. “Jim’s right. You did good.”
Useless words. Johnny was already suffering from a bad case of survivor’s guilt that would only get worse. He looked from Kate to Jim and back again, his face an agony of remembrance. “I keep thinking, if I’d just—”
“Let me put it this way,” Kate said, leaning forward and placing a hand over his. “Thank you.”
The awful beginnings of hysteria halted, Johnny stared at her. “Thank me? What for?”
“For staying alive.” She squeezed his hands once and let him go. “Can I take him home?”
Jim nodded. “I’ll need a formal statement tomorrow.”
“Of course.” Their eyes met in perfect understanding. To Johnny she said, “Take Mutt out to the truck, will you?”
When the door closed behind them, she said, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Big and blond and an asshole,” Jim said. “It has to be.”
“You going to go get him tonight?”
Jim got to his feet and pulled his hat on. “You bet I am.”
She followed him to the door. “I’ll bring Johnny back into town in the morning. You want to do a lineup?”
“You bet I do,” Jim said, holding the door for her. “This one goes by the book.”
The Roadhouse door swung closed behind them with a solid thud, and Jim said with savage satisfaction, “No more acquittals or mistrials for Louis Deem.”
SIX
Louis was amused when Jim insisted on taking him in, in handcuffs, no less. He appeared even more amused when Johnny picked him out of the lineup the next morning.
The lineup was easy, given the common occurrence of Native-Scandinavian ancestry in the Park. Six other men resembling Deem’s shape and size stood against one wall of the interview room at the trooper post. There had been no shortage of volunteers. Alex Mike had even flown in from Anchorage in his Cessna 172 when Billy called to tell him the news, but then some said he still carried a torch for Jessie McComas. There was one draftee, Willard Shugak. Jim had tracked him down to where he was ingesting massive quantities of sourdough pancakes at Auntie Balasha’s and brought him in, too, and he’d brought Howie in with Louis because they were enough of a height and what the hell, if he was wrong about Louis, which he wasn’t, maybe he could hang it on Howie.
Kate and Johnny stood against the back wall. Jim had dimmed the lights to approximate the conditions at the Koslowski house at the time of the murders. He regarded the result with grim complacency. No, Judge Singh would have nothing to complain about.
Louis stood third in the lineup with a smirk on his face. If anything, the smirk increased when everyone was dismissed except him, and it increased further when four of the six managed to jostle, elbow, or shove him on their way out of the room. He said something to Willard, last in line, that Jim didn’t catch. Willard, understanding enough to be frightened of the proceedings and sniveling into his shirtsleeve because of it, shrank back and made a wide circle around Louis to get to the door. Howie made some crack to Louis, and Louis’s smirk broadened into a grin.
“Are you sure?” Kate said in a low voice.
Johnny nodded, his face pale, his expression resolute. “I’m sure.”
She looked at his determined expression and said no more, but she had inner reservations. There was a crowd of Park rats outside the post, and as he’d walked through it from Kate’s truck to the post’s front door, those who hadn’t been close enough to pat his shoulder in congratulation shouted “Way to go, kid!” and “We finally nailed the bastard!” and “Let him try to get away with this one!” Everyone wanted Louis for this one.
Well, so did she. But she wished Johnny had seen Louis’s face.
Actually, what she really wished was that she’d taken Johnny to Disneyland.
Jim cuffed Louis and took his elbow to lead him back to his cell. Louis purposefully hung back. “I thought that was you back there in the dark, Kate. You got your boy with you?”
Jim shoved Louis forward. Nimble on his feet as always, Louis never lost his balance. “We haven’t met, kid. But we will. Oh, yeah. We will.”
“Hurry up, Louis,” Jim said. “I need to get back to my office to look up the Alaska statute on threatening bodily harm. See if we can add some more time on that life sentence you’ve already got going for you.”
He shoved Louis into the cell, slammed and locked the door behind him, and turned to go.
“Hey, Jim.”
“What,” Jim said without looking around.
“Not that this hasn’t been fun, and not that I’d mind a free trip to Ahtna—I could do with a Costco run—but before you put Judge Singh to all the trouble of an evidentiary hearing, you might like to check out my alibi.”
At that Jim did turn, to fix Louis with a bleak and unyielding eye. “Alibi?”
“Abigail Smith.” The smirk was back in full force. “My fiancee.”
“What about her?” Jim said.
“I was with her last night.” Louis stretched and summoned up a yawn. “All night. I’d just barely gotten home when you showed up.”
“And of course she’ll swear to that.”
“She’s a religious person,” Louis said piously. “They take that whole ninth commandment thing pretty seriously.”
This time he let Jim get all the way to the door before he said, “Homely kid, that Johnny Morgan. Looks a lot like his dad.”
I have to ask her,” Jim said doggedly. “She’ll lie. God alone knows why, but women lie all the time for Louis Deem.”
“I know, Kate. I still have to ask.” Jim looked at Johnny. “Are you sure it was Deem, Johnny?”
Johnny nodded, chin resolute.
Jim met Kate’s eyes, and she knew what he was thinking. After the lineup, Deem’s face would be fixed in Johnny’s memory, superimposed over the shadowy figure he had seen in the Koslowskis’ house that night.
They both knew, too, that at a vengeful, visceral level every Park rat worthy of the name wanted it to be Deem, and that it was impossible for Johnny not to feel the weight of that expectation.
“Okay.” Jim rubbed a hand over his face. “Sit down, both of you.”
“Johnny’s got school—”
“School can wait. Just a few minutes of your time, Kate. Please.” When they were all seated, he spoke directly to Johnny, trying very hard to treat him as any other witness in any other case. “Johnny, you say it was Deem that you saw last night.”
“It was.�
� Johnny was becoming more positive with every iteration. Repetition breeds its own certainty.
“Are you willing to testify to that in court?”
Johnny, to whom Fitz’s death was just beginning to feel real, with the subsequent and inevitable anger growing into the aftermath, said in a firm voice, “Yes.”
Jim looked at Kate, and Kate leaned forward to be eye to eye with Johnny. “Louis Deem is a very bad guy, Johnny.”
“I know.”
“Juries like eyewitnesses, especially Alaskan juries, who always want to convict someone but who like to feel sure they’re doing the right thing when they do. I don’t know how much physical evidence there will be, that’s all on the lab guys in Anchorage, but if this alibi of Deem’s holds up, the case will rest on your testimony.”
Johnny’s face looked pinched. “I know.”
He didn’t, not really, but Kate let it pass. “I know we’ve said this like nine times already, but I want you to understand. Louis’s—he’s broken, Johnny. He’s bad not because he doesn’t know any different. He does. He’s bad because he enjoys it. Hell, he revels in it. It’s just more fun for him than being good. The people he’s hurt, the people he’s killed, that’s just a Deem good time. Like you and me would go fishing with Old Sam, or those crazy-ass climbers summit Big Bump, or the four aunties building one of their quilts, or Bernie coaching basketball, or Jim here—”
“I get it, Kate,” Johnny said, much to Jim’s relief. He looked at the floor and said in a small voice, “Are you saying that Louis Deem will try to hurt me if I testify?”
Kate looked at Jim. “It wouldn’t be the first time, Johnny.”
Johnny looked at Jim. “But he’ll be in jail.”
It occurred to Jim that he was a little too close to the eyewitness in this case, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it now. “Yes.”
He could see that Johnny was having a hard time dealing with the idea that sometimes the bad guys won. Jim wished with all his heart that he didn’t have to be the one to introduce Johnny to the realities of American jurisprudence. For a moment he bitterly resented the role being thrust upon him, and then he looked into Johnny’s face, the promise of strength in the strong bones and the honesty in the frank eyes, and he thought, Hell, if the kid can hitchhike from Arizona to Alaska at the age of twelve, he ought to know what he can and can’t handle. He said, “Yeah, Deem is in jail, and I don’t guess Judge Singh’ll be throwing bail bones his way anytime soon. Or ever, if she can help it. But you should know, Johnny, that Louis Deem has a history of intimidating witnesses. And he’s got a lot of money for a good attorney. Hell, I think he’s got Rickard on retainer, and Rickard is never nice to witnesses against his client. If you were thinking anyone was going to be easy on you because you’re only fourteen, think again.”
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