Johnny’s shoulders had stiffened. “I wasn’t.”
Jim looked at Kate. “What about you? Are you on board with this?”
Kate sat there, looking at Johnny, trying to sort out an answer to Jim’s question. Was she? For the general well-being of the population of the Park, Louis Deem needed to be put away. A double homicide would make him a guest of the state for the lifetimes of most Park rats.
Correction. A conviction on a double homicide would. Louis Deem’s almost preternatural ability to skate on the most heinous crimes had to be taken into account.
If he skated this time . . . well, Louis Deem always got even. He’d left Kate alone until now, but she was always wary of him, always aware of the malevolent interest directed her way. Because the six years following her return to the Park hadn’t given him an opportunity for payback didn’t mean he wouldn’t take it when it was offered. Louis Deem had one thing most criminal types did not: patience. He was willing and able to wait for what he wanted.
Which led her to identify the niggling unease she had been feeling about the murders of Enid and Fitz Koslowski. The whole robbery was so ... it was just so careless. Louis Deem was a lot of things, but clumsy wasn’t one of them. The reason none of his arrests had stuck was because he was fastidious in choosing his targets, meticulous in making his plans, and shrewd in their execution. This rushed robbery, these hasty murders had amateur written all over them.
Amateur was also something Louis Deem most definitely was not.
They deposited Johnny with Bobby and Dinah, Kate deciding that Johnny needed family more than he needed school that day. Katya was as usual ecstatic to see him, and Kate could see visible signs of him relaxing in her exuberant two-year-old presence. Unqualified love was a great healer.
Back in the Blazer, Kate told Jim what she’d been thinking.
“‘Clumsy’?” Jim said. “Maybe the word you’re looking for is arrogant!’
Kate digested this. “You mean because he was acquitted of Mary Waterbury’s murder.”
“He’s gotten away with so much, Kate. You said it yourself. We taught him he could get away with murder. This last acquittal may have put him over the edge, made him think he was invincible. Maybe he thought he could get away with a little smash-and-grab and—oh, oops!—eliminate some unexpected witnesses on his way out.”
“Turn here,” Kate said, pointing.
Jim gave a quiet but heartfelt curse at the condition of the Cat trail, which had not improved since Kate had driven it with Dan.
“Everyone in the Park knew about Bernie’s gold collection,” Kate said. “I’ve seen him haul total strangers out of the Roadhouse to go look at it.”
Jim risked a glance away from the track to look at her. “What is this, Kate? You want Deem to be innocent?”
“No!” she said, loudly enough that Mutt, sitting in the backseat, put her ears back. “No,” she said again, more calmly this time. “I just like things to fit, is all.” She gave her head an angry shake. “No, you’re right. It’s hubris, pure and simple. Louis Deem always did think he was better than Superman. Why shouldn’t he? Even kryptonite wouldn’t kill this son of a bitch.”
The Smiths must have heard the Blazer coming because they were all assembled on the deck when Jim and Kate pulled up. The deck now had a railing, and the four walls of the big cabin were eight logs high. A pile of trusses sat to one side, ready to start holding up the roof. They looked handmade, sturdy, and functional.
“Mr. Smith,” Jim said, “I’m Sergeant Jim Chopin with the Alaska State Troopers. I believe you’ve met Kate Shugak.”
“Of course.” Smith effected a bow that reeked of noblesse oblige in Kate’s direction. “Who could forget?”
“I see you’re still here, Mr. Smith. Eviction notice notwithstanding.”
“I am indeed, Kate.” Smith bent a kindly eye on Jim. “How may I help you, Sergeant?”
“I understand you have a daughter named Abigail.”
Smith’s eye became less kindly. “Yes. My eldest.” He did not indicate which of the seventeen assembled, but Kate saw her at the back of the crowd looking nervous. Near her were the next two oldest girls, Chloe and Hannah, holding hands so tightly, their knuckles were white even at this distance.
“I’d like to speak to Abigail in private, if I may.”
“You may not.” Smith was sounding very frosty.
Jim nodded as if that was what he had expected. “Then may I speak to her in the presence of you and her mother?”
Smith made a grandiloquent gesture with one hand. “You may speak freely in front of our entire family, Sergeant. We don’t keep secrets from one another.”
Kate had been watching Abigail during this conversation, and she had seen the girl turn white and then red and then white again. “Jim—”
“No help for it,” he said in a low voice, and raised his voice again. “May I meet Abigail?”
“Abigail. Come forward.”
Abigail threaded her way through the crowd of siblings with all the enthusiasm of one headed for the guillotine, which for all Kate knew about this family she might well be.
“Abigail, this is Sergeant Chopin. As a matter of curiosity, Sergeant, Chopin as in Frederic?”
“He was a distant cousin a couple of generations back, yes, sir,” Jim said.
“A brilliant composer. I’ve always been fond of his tribute to Mozart.”
“I wouldn’t know, sir. I’m a Bruce Springsteen fan myself.” Jim looked at Abigail. “Hello, Abigail. I’m Sergeant Chopin.”
Abigail looked steadfastly at her feet. “Hello.”
“I understand you are engaged to be married to Louis Deem.”
She nodded, sneaking a sidelong look at her father, and a second, more furtive one at Kate.
Jim hesitated, and Kate wondered if he was thinking of the putative guillotine himself. She watched him square his shoulders and plunge in. “Last night, there was—something happened at the Roadhouse last night, Abigail, something very bad. Two people are dead. They were murdered, shot at point-blank range by their killer. A mother and her fourteen-year-old son.”
Jim was going into unnecessary detail, and Kate wondered if he was doing it deliberately, trying to shock her into telling the truth. He might also have been trying to poison the Abigail well for Louis Deem, if the case went into the toilet.
Abigail said nothing. Smith said, “And what has this to do with us, Sergeant?”
“We have an eyewitness who has identified the killer as Louis Deem.”
Abigail’s head shot up at this, eyes wide, face pale. “I don’t believe you.”
Kate closed her eyes and shook her head. How many more little girls? How many more?
She opened her eyes and looked at Abigail. Evidently one more.
“Come into Niniltna,” Jim said, his voice hardening. “The Roadhouse was pretty full last night. Chances are the first person you’ll meet saw the bodies.”
“I don’t believe Louis killed anyone!”
“Oh, for—”
“Kate.” Jim’s voice was quiet but firm.
“Wuff.” So was Mutt’s. She leaned her shoulder against Kate’s leg.
“Louis denies that he killed anyone,” Jim said. “He says it would have been impossible, and, Abigail, he says you’ll tell us why.”
Abigail looked at her father. Smith looked back at her. “Abigail?”
She shook her head wildly, braid twitching back and forth like a short thick whip.
“In fact,” Jim said, “Louis Deem says he was with Abigail all night, and that she will vouch for him.”
“Abigail?” Mrs. Smith materialized out of the crowd. “Abigail, is this true?”
“No! No, I—”
“Abigail.” Her father’s voice boomed like the last trump. “Look at me.”
Shrinking, Abigail risked a look. “Father, I—”
“Abigail.” There was a world of patience and paternalism in the single word. It made
Abigail flinch. It made Kate flinch too, albeit for different reasons. “Were you with Louis last night?”
“No, Father, I wasn’t, I—”
“Chloe.”
The older of the hand-clasped pair jumped.
“Come here.”
Chloe exchanged an agonized glance with Hannah. Hannah wouldn’t let go of Chloe’s hand, and both girls came forward with faltering steps. “Yes, Father.”
“Was Abigail in her own bed last night?”
Chloe looked at Abigail, and away again. “Yes, Father.”
Inexorably, Smith said, “All night?”
There was a strained silence. Into it Smith said gently, “Abigail, will you really force your sister to lie for you?”
A tear slid down Abigail’s cheek. She wiped it away with a furtive gesture. She raised her head and met her father’s eyes straight on. “I went out last night after everyone was asleep.”
“To meet Louis?”
“Yes, Father,” Abigail said, her voice steadying. She stood a little straighter. “I waited until all the other girls were asleep and then I went down the trail to the outhouse. Louis was waiting for me.”
“Where?”
She pointed. The outhouse looked as well made as the beginnings of the cabin, with carefully planed sides and a shingled roof. A well-worn track went past it from the building site to the Cat trail. “I met him up the track in his truck. He took me to his house.”
There was a collective indrawing of breath among the other offspring. Mother Smith looked shocked and sorrowful. “Oh, Abigail,” she said, shaking her head. “After all you have been taught. You were going to be married.”
“I still am, Mother.” It was the first sign of backbone Abigail had displayed, and Kate was insensibly cheered to see it.
Mother looked at Father. “That is for your father to say.”
Abigail took a step forward and prepared to testify. She stared straight at Jim, willing him to believe her. “I spent the night with Louis Deem.” She added, a little defiantly, “My fiance.”
“Was there any moment during which Louis was not with you?” Jim said. “When you fell asleep, maybe?”
Abigail blushed slightly and refused to look at either her parents or her brothers and sisters. “No. We—we didn’t sleep a lot.”
Ah, youth, Kate thought.
She couldn’t make up her mind if Abigail was telling the truth. Later, negotiating the track back to the Park road, she said so to Jim. “She was pretty convincing there.”
“She’s in love,” Jim said cynically. “And she’s been trained in witnessing for the Lord. Question is, would a jury believe her?”
“Depends on the jury.”
“Yeah. Jesus!” This as Jim coaxed the Blazer through a pothole that could be more accurately described as a lunar crater. Safely out of it again, he said, “We’ve got an eyewitness that places Deem at the scene, gun in hand.”
“And about that gun.”
“Yeah, and there are only fifty-two creeks he could have tossed it into on the way home from Bernie’s house.” Jim shrugged. “Don’t necessarily need a weapon to convict. To continue. The suspect’s alibi is his fiancee, young and head over heels in love, who could be relied upon to lie until she was blue in the face to protect him.”
“Did you find Louis’s fingerprints at Bernie’s house?”
“The report isn’t back yet.”
“Did you find any of Bernie’s gold at Louis’s house?”
“No.”
“Anything at all to—?”
“Kate.” They came to the end of the track, and with relief Jim shifted into second for the first time since he’d turned onto the Cat trail to the Smiths’ house. “I repeat, is there some reason you don’t want Deem to be guilty? Of this particular crime, that is.”
Kate shifted in her seat. In a lesser being, it might have been called squirming. Mutt panted at her, tongue lolling out of one side of her mouth, teeth bared in an enormous canine grin. “I guess I’m trying to think like Frank Rickard.” She turned to look at Jim. “I don’t want Louis to get off this time, Jim.”
“Because of Johnny.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered him anyway. “I look over my own shoulder enough already because of Louis Deem. If Louis hadn’t been in jail waiting for trial at the time, he would have been the first person I talked to after my cabin was burned. I don’t want to have to be looking over Johnny’s shoulder, too.”
“Abigail Smith would swear that she spent last night picking out place settings with Louis Deem if that was what it took to get him off the hook, Kate. Any DA worthy of the title is going to be able to break her. She’s just a kid, don’t forget. Not that much older than Johnny, if it comes to that. Don’t worry. This time Louis’s going down.”
The memory of the two sprawled bodies on the front steps of Bernie Koslowski’s house flashed into his mind, and his voice hardened. “The Waterbury acquittal made Deem feel like he was somehow immune from further prosecution, and he got arrogant, and it made him careless. He knew—hell, everyone in the Park knew about Auntie Vi’s swap and shop, and he knew everyone would be there. And of course he knew about Bernie’s gold stash because everyone knew about Bernie’s gold stash. Everyone up at Auntie Vi’s meant nobody home at Bernie’s. Perfect time to rip it off. Deem didn’t figure on a couple of hor-monally challenged teenaged boys and a teenaged boy’s suspicious mother acting like teenaged boys and suspicious mothers normally do.”
Kate sat back with a sigh. “And he panicked.”
“Happens to the best of us, Kate.”
“And the worst,” Kate said. “And the worst of us, too.”
SEVEN
Days passed. Louis languished in Jim’s cell, not quite so amused as he had been but not worried yet, either. Abigail visited him daily, throwing hate bombs at Jim by way of dirty looks and delivering meals of cold fried chicken and potato salad by the bucket load to the inmate, who didn’t offer to share.
Sometimes the smells wafting out of the cells made Jim want to cry, and it wasn’t like he was underfed, because Kate was baking bread like she was going to start a wholesale outlet. This week it was baguettes, in the French style, and she was on her fifth batch. The first batches hadn’t survived the third proofing and the last had had the consistency of breadsticks. When he and Johnny had left this morning, Kate had been measuring out flour with the intensity of Alfred Nobel putting together the ingredients for dynamite, and Jim just bet he knew under whose house Kate was fantasizing setting off the explosion.
Beanie Koslowski had put Laurel Meganack in charge of the Roadhouse and remained at home. The aunties were making sure he and the two kids were fed, and intercepting and diverting the steady stream of Park rats who came knocking at the door out of compassion or curiosity.
It was a silent household, still too numb from shock to feel grief. When the grief abated, Jim knew from long experience with survivors of violent crimes, there would be rage, and a demand for someone to be held responsible. Jim made some excuse to drive out there daily to check in.
Bernie would recover first, before the children. Jim wanted to be there when he did, to reassure him that Alaska’s finest was on the case. Bernie might not have been Alaskan born, but he had fully adapted to his adopted land. There was a gun rack above the French doors leading onto the deck, holding a Browning 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and a Winchester bolt-action 300. Jim had eaten enough ptarmigan and venison at Beanie’s table to know that Beanie was proficient with both.
Four days later, the crime lab in Anchorage delivered the depressing news that no fingerprints other than the Koslowski family’s had been found on the shards of glass or sections of doorframe on the display case that Jim had sent in. Jim hadn’t really expected anything else.
There was a moment of excitement when Kate, scrutinizing the Roadhouse environs, found a tire track in the Roadhouse parking lot that she matched to the front right tire on Louis Deem’s vehicl
e. Alas, Howie had driven it that day, which explanation Jim heard with an incredulity bordering on scorn until it was vouchsafed to by no less an upstanding citizen than Auntie Vi, to whose swap and shop Howie had delivered a load of sale items in the bed of said pickup. Auntie Vi remembered because Howie and Willard had needed a lot of room to display their goods, including a great many snow machine parts. And many witnesses had been the beneficiaries when Howie rang the bell at the Roadhouse later that evening on the strength of their sales.
“Trying to impress Amy Huth,” Kate said.
“Is Howie smitten?”
She nodded. “I hear he left her a honking big tip.”
“Did it work?”
“Reports are she remained unimpressed.”
“Good.”
It was the only good news that week. There was in fact no physical evidence to link Louis Deem to the murders of Enid and Fitz Koslowski. But there was Johnny Morgan and his steadfast determination to stand up for what he had seen.
“Gutsy kid,” Jim said.
“Vanessa’s been keeping close. Helps, I think. Good friends make all things bearable.” Although Johnny had been quieter than usual lately, and Kate knew he was mourning Fitz’s loss.
So was the Park. Auntie Vi organized a memorial potlatch and roped the other aunties and Kate in to help. It was held at the school gymnasium, where all such events were held, on the Saturday following the murders, and everyone in the Park turned out, more, it must be admitted, for Bernie and Fitz than for Enid.
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