A box of Kleenex hit the back of his head and bounced off. Unperturbed, he said, “Also, you won’t have to change any diapers.”
This time, it was a disposable diaper—clean, fortunately. It bounced down to join the Kleenex.
“Excuse me, folks, I’m getting a little editorial comment from management. Stand by one.” He scooped up the diaper, turned in the same movement, and let it sail right back at Dinah. It fell short, but it was a good effort. He went back to the mike. “Christie in Niniltna, Christie in Niniltna, your lawyer wants to talk to you. He says you know the number. Well, that can’t be good. My condolences, Christie.”
The Park Post was the Park equivalent of jungle drums, putting the father in touch with the fisherman, the fisherman in touch with his banker, the banker in touch with the deadbeat, the deadbeat in touch with the Brown Jug Liquor Store. During cold snaps, when the mercury hit minus double digits and the wind howled down out of the Quilaks, forcing everyone to huddle inside around the woodstove, they turned on the radio to hear Bobby Clark tell them that George was holding their Costco mail order at the hangar until it warmed up enough to hitch the trailer to the snow machine, or that their husband had been weathered in on a caribou hunt (“a likely story,” Bobby’s invariable comment), or that their daughter had just become engaged, married, or pregnant.
“And last but not least,” Bobby said, tossing another crumpled scrap, “Billy and Annie Mike are throwing a potlatch at the school gym this Thursday afternoon in honor of their new son, Cale. Everybody come on by and meet him and have something to eat, and there might even be a dance or two. Okay, time for some music, and none of that wishy-washy, weak-kneed, warbly boy band stuff we got going around today, no sir.” Bobby flipped open a case and put a CD in the player. “Here’s the Temptations’ Seventeen Greatest Hits coming at you, except I’m going to skip to the second cut. Why? Because it’s my favorite, and because I can! Bye!” He flipped off the mike and punched the play button, and the strains of “My Girl” came out of speakers almost as tall as Jim was, four of them, mounted one to each wall of the room.
“It’s enough to make you believe in stereo,” Jim said to Dinah.
Bobby wheeled around. “Jim Chopin! As your chopper didn’t fill up my show with a bunch of goddamn background noise, I have to assume you were reduced to driving in.”
“Yeah, I borrowed Billy’s truck.”
Bobby’s eyes widened. “Holy shit! He let you borrow his new Explorer?” He zipped to the window in his wheelchair, which, given the way he operated it most of the time, seemed like it was jet-propelled. Jim stepped nimbly out of the way of the wheels.
It was easy to remember that Bobby was black—all you had to do was look at him—and, as such, part of a minority measured in the single digits in the Park. It was, however, sometimes hard to remember that he had lost both his legs from the knee on down in a Southeast Asian jungle before he was twenty. His personal history was hazy in between his time in a veteran’s rehab clinic and the time he appeared on scene in the Park somewhere around 1978, but whatever he’d been doing in the interim had to have been lucrative, because he’d had enough cash in hand to stake a claim on Squaw Candy Creek, build his A-frame, stock it with enough electronic equipment to keep NASA in business, and buy a vehicle each for air, land, sea, and snow, specially modified, in Bobby’s exact phrase, “to get a no-legged gimp anywhere he wants to go in as short a time as possible.” He was now the NOAA observer for the Park, calling in weather observations twice a day. Other than that, he seemed to subsist on barter and air, a neat trick, since two years ago Dinah had moved in with him, and a year after that, she presented him with Katya. Dinah, a budding videographer, wasn’t pulling in a lot of money herself.
Jim had long ago decided that what Bobby had or had not done before he settled in the Park was none of his business. Bobby drank a lot of Kentucky sipping whiskey, he pirated a little radio wave, and, other than throwing an annual blowout for other Park survivors of the Tet Offensive, lived a quiet life.
And, Jim had enough of the outlaw in himself to recognize another outlaw when he saw one. “Hey, Bobby.” He doffed cap and jacket and accepted a mug of steaming coffee from Dinah.
“Goddamn, Chopin!” Bobby said, executing a perfect turn on one wheel with no perceptible traveling. Five point nine, all judges. “How the hell did you talk Billy out of his new wheels?”
Jim moved over to one of the couches surrounding the big rock fireplace set between the ceiling-high windows and sank into very deep cushions. “Well, it’s like this.”
Bobby and Dinah listened with absorption, and when he was done, they exchanged one of those glances married people give each other, the kind that exchanges a wealth of information without a word being said, and at the same time casts the uncoupled people in the room into outer darkness. “What?” he said.
“Nothing,” Dinah said, giving Bobby the look, it being another one of the shorthand methods of married communication.
“No,” Bobby said hastily. “Nothing. No wonder Billy gave you his wheels. Anything that brings jobs into the Park makes him happy.”
“Even if other people might not be,” Dinah said sotto voce, as if she couldn’t help herself.
Selective deafness was one of the more useful acquired talents in law enforcement, and Jim practiced it now. “Do you think it’ll work?”
Bobby stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Shit. Why ask us—you’ve already made up your mind.”
It wasn’t a question, and Jim let a grin be his answer. It was a wide grin, one that could and often did, variously, mesmerize, intimidate, terrify, annihilate, or seduce. Dinah had once heard it described as “the last thing you see before the shark bites” and again as “You know that snake in the movie The Jungle Book?” and most recently as “When he’s going out the door for the last time, it’s like that Judy Garland song, ‘The Man That Got Away.’”
As a female down to her fingertips, Dinah had always been relieved that she had seen Bobby first. Especially since she’d never been one for three-way relationships, and it had been clear from the first time she’d met him that any woman sleeping with Trooper Jim Chopin would be sharing that bed with a third person. It was only recently that she had realized that the third person had never changed, and only in the last year that she had learned to see Jim Chopin as a man instead of a caricature Don Juan. “Hungry?” she said to him. “I was just about to fix us some lunch.”
He smiled at her, and she had to repress the instinctive urge to take a step back. Or maybe forward. “Sounds good to me.”
They sat down to moose salad sandwiches and ate to the accompaniment of Katya banging her spoon against the tray of her high chair, scattering pureed moose salad all over Bobby’s black T-shirt. “Goddamn!” he roared, dabbing ineffectually at his chest. “That’s the second shirt today. I thought we was only supposed to be going through diapers by the dozen around here.”
“Goddamn!” Katya said, and banged her spoon again.
“Goddamn!” Bobby said, a huge grin on his face. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” Dinah said.
Bobby saw Dinah’s expression and whispered to Katya, “Bad word, honey. Mommy pissed off. We’ll talk later.”
Katya laughed, a gurgled baby chuckle, and held out her arms. Her father swooped around the table and scooped her out of her chair, tossing her up in the air. Conversation deteriorated into Park gossip. Had they but known it a rehash of a similar conversation held not twelve miles down the road the night before, only Bobby had a lot more appreciation to express for Bernie’s new barmaid. Dinah gave him a halfhearted swipe and he tucked Katya beneath one arm and scooped Dinah up in the other for a humming, prolonged kiss, which Jim observed with professional approval.
Dinah emerged from the embrace blushing, breathless, and laughing, and Bobby, satisfied, said, “She’s a beauty, but cold.”
It took Jim a moment to realize that Bobby was talking about the new barmai
d. “Oh yeah? What, she said no to you?”
“Cheese it,” Bobby hissed, jerking his head at Dinah.
“Sorry.”
“I’ll say. I don’t know, I just don’t warm up to her is all. She takes advantage. Dan walked into the Roadhouse the second day after she got there, and as soon as she got his job description, she made a beeline straight for him. Guy didn’t have a chance.”
“Poor guy,” Jim said.
Bobby looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“Up yours, Clark.”
Bobby grinned. “Who else you talking to?”
Jim ticked down a mental list. “You, George, Billy, Auntie Vi. I think I’ll head out to Bernie’s, see what he says.”
“Give my love to the new girl in town,” Bobby said, and caught a wet sponge upside the head. “That does it, woman. Now it’s war!”
5
An hour after opening time, the Roadhouse was still quiet, and Bernie had time to sit and listen. “Well,” he said when Jim came to the end, “it’ll sure as hell make my life easier.”
“What do you think the general reaction will be?”
Bernie flapped a hand. “Nothing to worry about. Hell, the bootleggers’ll run for cover, the dopers will keep their heads low, and ordinary citizens might even think twice about whatever trouble they were planning on getting into. I don’t see much but good coming out of it, Jim. And it won’t raise my taxes, which always makes me happy.”
“Nothing raises your taxes, Bernie; you do business in a federal park.”
“Shows how much you know about being an employer,” Bernie said. “I just took on a new server—”
“I saw. Yum.” He looked around. “Where is she, by the way?”
“She doesn’t come on shift until four. She’s renting the Gette cabin from the new owners.” He looked up from polishing a glass and checked the window. “It’s a gorgeous day; she’s probably out skiing somewhere. She’s a telemarker, she tells me.
That’s why she moved here—for the snow.”
“Oh yeah?”
Bernie leveled a stern forefinger. “You stay away from Christie Turner, goddamn it. She’s working out. I don’t need her screwed up by some slick talker who only wants to get in her pants.”
Jim grinned. Bernie sounded a little wistful, as if sorry he had to follow that rule himself. Edith must be keeping him on a tighter leash than usual. Not that Bernie didn’t stray now and then, but strictly when he thought he could get away with it. “I hear she’s already taken anyway. Hands off, Scout’s honor.”
Bernie gave him a skeptical look, but whatever he had been about to say was interrupted by the front door slamming open and banging off the wall.
“Hey!” Bernie said indignantly.
Dandy Mike barreled through the doorway, bundled in down pants and parka, his eyes wide and his expression anxious. He spotted Jim and crossed the floor in hasty steps. “Jim, thank god. You’ve got to come, right now.”
“Where? And why?” Jim stood up. “Dandy.
You’ve got blood all over your pants.”
Dandy glanced down, up again. “I know. It’s Dina and Ruthe. I went up to deliver their mail, and they’re—” He swallowed. “They’re dead.”
“What?” Bernie said.
“Dina and Ruthe. Somebody broke into their cabin, and Dan—”
“Dan? Dan O’Brian? What about him?”
Dandy swallowed again. “Jim, just come, come right now, okay? Come on.”
Billy’s Explorer made it up the narrow and nearly vertical track to the little cabin, but only just barely, and not without scratching the finish on low-hanging spruce boughs. Dandy’s father was going to be pissed.
Dandy pulled his snow machine to a halt in front of the stairs. Jim parked behind him and got out with the briefcase that held his crime-scene kit, without which he never went anywhere. “Hold it, Dandy,” he said when Dandy put his foot on the bottom stair. “Let me go first.” He checked the camera to see that it held film, got out his notepad and pencil. “Okay,” he said, “I don’t want you in the room. Stay in the doorway and keep everybody else out.”
“Who else?” Dandy said, and even as the words left his mouth, they heard the buzzing of approaching snow machines. He gaped at Jim. “How did you know? How did they know?”
“First thing you learn when working out here: The Bush telegraph is faster than the speed of sound. Keep them out.”
“Will do,” Dandy said, shaken but staunch. Dandy Mike, a charming wastrel with an eye for the ladies every bit as keen as Jim’s own, might have a little bit more backbone about him than Jim had previously supposed.
The door, which Dandy had not closed all the way in his haste to depart, slid open with a snick, and Jim stepped inside. He stayed where he was, immobile except for his eyes, which were surveying and cataloging the scene.
His peripheral vision picked up movement, and he crouched and whirled, one hand on his weapon.
It was Dan O’Brian, pulling himself painfully to his feet, looking bloody, bruised, confused, and dazed.
“Dan!” Jim said incredulously. “What the hell?”
And then a second sound made them both jump. One of the bodies on the floor moved, groaned, whimpered. Jim leapt forward, hurdling the piles of pulled-out books and pushing the overturned table in an effort to reach Ruthe Bauman. Landing next to her, he pressed two fingers against her throat. “Son of a bitch!”
“What’s the matter, Jim?” Dandy said from the porch.
“Ruthe’s still alive!”
“She can’t be!”
“Didn’t you check for life signs?”
“I—” Dandy was at a loss. “I didn’t even go in after I opened the door. I saw them both lying there covered in blood and Dan standing over them. I thought they were dead. Jesus, Jim, I’m—”
“Never mind that now. Back the truck around!”
He checked Dina’s body just to be sure. No pulse, no breath sounds. She was dead, a graceless heap of brittle bone and sagging flesh, her thinning white hair disarranged from its usual neat roll. Her jaw was slack, her mouth a little open. He pulled out his radio, but of course he was out of range. He cursed Dandy for not checking for signs of life more thoroughly, for losing so much precious time in getting Ruthe to help. He cursed himself, too, steadily and out loud, for not bringing the Bell Jet Ranger on this trip.
“Jim?”
“Shut up, Dan.”
“Jim, I don’t have to say I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
Jim agonized over whether to move Ruthe, who was on her side, unconscious, colorless, and clammy and who was bleeding from several wounds, including a continuous horrific gash across her breasts.
“Jim?”
“Shut up, Dan. Now.” There was no blood coming from her mouth or her nose, so he took the chance and rolled her her onto her back to bind her wounds as best he could with dish towels from the kitchen.
“The truck’s backed around,” Dandy said from the door. He looked like he was going to puke.
“Not in here,” Jim said, pointing outside, and Dandy went gladly.
“You’ll need something to carry her out on.” Dan’s voice was steadier, and when Jim looked at him, he seemed back on balance. “Kitchen table?”
It was on its side and one of the legs was broken off. Dan broke off the other three and he and Jim carefully maneuvered a cocooned Ruthe to the top of it. It was a small table, thankfully, but all the same, Jim skinned a knuckle getting it through the door. The stairs were a blasphemous negotiation, but they got the table and Ruthe into the back of the Explorer by putting the backseat down. Jim packed in everything he could find, pillows, bolsters, the cushions from the chairs and couch, anything to keep Ruthe from rolling with the motion of the vehicle. He piled the blankets high and checked her pulse again. Still fast and thready. Her skin hadn’t warmed; and she still felt clammy.
“Drive her to Niniltna,” Jim said, “and get her on the first plane
out of here.”
“What?” Dandy said, startled. “You’re not taking her in?”
“This didn’t happen that long ago, Dandy. I might be able to catch whoever did this.”
Dandy looked at the ranger. “Yeah, but Jim—”
Dan looked immensely relieved. Jim didn’t have the time, or rather, Ruthe didn’t, but he had to ask. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to ask Dina and Ruthe for help keeping my job,” Dan said, nodding at the second snow machine pulled to one side of the yard. “I found them like you saw them. And before you ask, no, I didn’t see anyone or hear anything.”
“Where’d you get the bruises?”
The ranger looked at Dandy. “I was headed for the door to go for help when this guy barged in.” He touched his forehead and winced. “The door caught me in the head and knocked me down. I guess I was out for a while, because next thing I know, you’re here.”
Jim looked at him. Dan met his eyes without evasion. “What else?”
“Nothing.” Dan looked startled. “There isn’t anything else.”
Time to fish or cut bait. Jim had known Dan O’Brian for fifteen years, and barring the importation of a bottle of blackberry brandy into a dry village for the purposes of stewing up a mess of mallards, the ranger had a crime-free record. He had wanted Dina and Ruthe’s help, which eliminated a motive for murder, at least on the face of it. There was no time to waste. Jim made up his mind. “Dan, you ride in the back. Keep her as still as you can.”
“What?” Dandy said.
“If she shows blood from the nose or mouth, roll her to one side, but only if she shows the blood.”
“Jim—” Dandy said.
Jim turned to Dandy and said, “When you get to the strip, commandeer the first plane out. Get her to Ahtna as fast as you can.”
A Fine and Bitter Snow Page 8