A Fine and Bitter Snow

by Dana Stabenow

She raised an eyebrow. They both knew from bitter experience that a perp without an attorney was a confession just waiting to be kicked. Defense attorneys were as much witness to due process as they were advocate for the accused.

  “I know,” Jim said, “but I can’t force one on him.” He raised his voice. “Riley?”

  Kate silenced him with an upraised hand. She pointed to the door. Jim frowned and shook his head. She kept pointing. He sighed, handed her the key, and stepped into the hall. He left Mutt behind, though.

  “Mr. Higgins.” Kate kept her voice low and calm. “May I please come in?”

  The novelty of being asked permission to enter his jail cell did not fail to have an effect. Higgins rolled to a sitting position and looked at her with anxious eyes. “Do I know you?”

  “No, sir, we haven’t met. My name is Kate Shugak.” She let her hand rest on Mutt’s head. “This is Mutt.”

  He met Mutt’s yellow stare and smiled. “What a beautiful dog.” He reached a hand through the bars. Kate tensed and almost warned him, and then his hand was scratching Mutt between the ears and the big gray half wolf was leaning into it.

  There was a dead silence. Kate pulled herself together enough to say, “May I come in, Mr. Higgins?”

  “The door’s locked,” he said apologetically, as if she wouldn’t know that, and as if he were committing some dreadful social solecism by confessing to it.

  “I have a key. May I?”

  “Oh. Certainly.” He rose to his feet as she entered, Mutt padding at her side. There was a chair opposite the bunk, next to the sink. The jail kept its cells clean, but there were some smells you can never scrub away, and human vomit, urine, and excrement were three of the most pervasive. Kate sat down in the chair. Higgins waited until she was seated before sitting on the bunk. He had awfully good manners for a murderer.

  His dark hair was thinning and cut to above his ears, his face gaunt, lined, and freshly shaven. His hands, clasped in front of him, were large-knuckled and scarred. He was so thin, his body was little more than a layer of skin over bone. He was probably fifty, fifty-five. He looked a hundred.

  “You’re from Illinois, I understand, Mr. Higgins.”

  He looked startled. “Yes, I am. Carbondale.”

  “All your life?”

  “Yes. Well, except for when I was in the army.” He ducked his head. “You know what the worst thing about jail is?”

  “What?”

  “No windows. In the movies, there are always windows, with bars on, that you can see out of.”

  “With John Wayne on the other side.”

  He smiled, delighted that she would play. “Right.”

  “That was always in Texas. Be cold here.”

  He frowned. “Oh, I guess. I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “It’s a long way from Illinois to Alaska.”

  “Yes. I mean, I guess so.”

  “A long drive for someone traveling alone.”

  He looked away. “I walked.”

  The AlCan was fifteen hundred miles long, plus however many miles it was from Milepost Zero to Carbondale, Illinois. “Hitchhiked, do you mean?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean,” he said too quickly.

  She nodded. By now, it would be next to impossible to find anyone who had given him a ride, even if his story were true, which it wasn’t. “That’s quite a trip. You must have seen some country.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, his face lighting. “Beautiful. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never been anywhere before, just home, and—well, just home, really. This was like—this was—” He shrugged and spread his hands. “Amazing.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “I’ve heard.”

  “You’ve never driven it yourself?”

  She shook her head. “The two times I’ve been Outside, I flew.”

  “You ought to drive it,” he said earnestly. “At least once.”

  “I’ve been told that,” she said, nodding. She let the amiable silence lie between them for a moment or two. “So the Park was the first left turn after you crossed the border,” she said, smiling at him. Kate’s smile, while not as lethal as Jim Chopin’s, seldom failed to have an effect, either.

  He smiled back. “Well, maybe not the first turn. But one of them.”

  “It’s a hard place to pass up. I know. I’ve lived here most of my life.”

  “I wondered.” He gave her a curious look. “If you don’t mind my asking, are you an Indian?”

  “I don’t mind,” Kate said, “and no, I’m an Alaska Native. Aleut, mostly, but if you go back a generation or two, it’s quite a mix. Pretty much everyone who dropped by Alaska dipped their pen in my ancestors’ inkwell, from the Russians on down. Heinz fifty-seven American.”

  Mutt lay down, and again Higgins scratched her head and retained his hand, and again Mutt leaned into it, as opposed to moving out of the way or even just tolerating it.

  “Just about the most beautiful dog I’ve ever seen,” Higgins said quietly.

  “She’s half wolf,” Kate said.

  His eyes widened. “Really?” He looked back at Mutt. “Wow. She seems pretty civilized. I always thought wolf hybrids were dangerous around people.”

  “Mutt’s the exception. And she’s got a pretty big backyard to run off any aggression she might be feeling.” Although the aggression was always there, and on tap when it was needed.

  “Where did you get her?”

  “She was a gift.” Kate nudged the conversation back on track. “Must have been tough, your first winter in the Park.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “I met Dina and Ruthe at the Roadhouse, and they were looking for someone to do odd jobs around their place for the winter. Cut wood, like that.”

  Kate nodded. “Yeah, they’re always looking for someone. Not many can stick out an Interior winter, when they’ve just gotten here.”

  “Yeah, your fall doesn’t last long,” he said, nodding. “I got here and, bam! it snowed. It was early compared to home. I was surprised.”

  The first snowfall had been on October 17. “And then it kept snowing.”

  “For six days,” he said ruefully, “and Dina and Ruthe had a heck of a lot of path to shovel.”

  “Nice little cabins, up the hill.”

  “Yeah,” he said nostalgically. “And an incredible view. Dina said that on a clear day you can see all the way to Prince William Sound. But I think she was fooling me.”

  “That why you killed her?” Kate said, asking her first question of the interview.

  His head snapped up and he stared at her out of wounded eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice strained.

  “You mean you didn’t kill her? You didn’t try to kill Ruthe?”

  “I don’t know. The way he found me, I must have—” He closed his eyes and what little flesh was left seemed to melt away from his face. “I don’t remember doing it, but I must have,” he whispered.

  “Ever do anything like this before?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes—”

  “Sometimes what?”

  “Sometimes I lose time.”

  “You lose time?”

  “I just blank out. One minute I’m walking down the street, and the sun’s out, and the kids are playing in the school yard, and the next minute I’m in the shelter, lying on a bed, wrapped up in a blanket.”

  “You had the knife in your hand when you were found. Did you blank that out, too?”

  “I don’t remember any knife,” he said helplessly. “I don’t remember anything after—” He stopped.

  “After what?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “If you didn’t kill Dina, who did?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Pretty convenient, your not knowing.”

  “I don’t know! Oh god! Oh god!” He moaned and put his hands over his ears. “Can you hear it? Can you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “They’re coming!”

&n
bsp; “Who’s coming?”

  “Incoming!” he screamed, and took her down in a diving tackle. Mutt was on her feet in an instant, barking wildly.

  Jim was through the door a heartbeat later, to find Higgins trying to drag Kate beneath his bunk, screaming “Incoming! Incoming!” at the top of his voice. Kate was trying to fight him off, and Mutt had her teeth fastened on the back of Kate’s sweatshirt and was pulling with her legs braced, growling all the time.

  She let go as soon as she saw Jim and started barking. The cement walls of the cells rang like a tocsin. Jim got one arm around Kate’s waist and hauled her up. For a moment, Higgins wouldn’t let go, and then he did and scuttled beneath his bunk. Jim deposited Kate unceremoniously in the hallway, said, “Out!” to Mutt, and went back into the cell. Higgins was curled into a ball, his knees to his chest and his arms over his head, moaning and crying and sobbing. “Oh God, I’m so scared, I’m so scared. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop!”

  “Riley,” Jim said. Higgins kept rocking and moaning. “Riley. Riley! It’s all over. The attack’s over, Riley. It’s safe to come out now.”

  Higgins’s sobbing slowly ceased.

  “Come on, Riley.” Jim held out a hand. He could hear Higgins snorting back mucus.

  “I’m going to stay here for a while. If that’s okay?”

  “Sure,” Jim said. “Sure it is.” He pulled the blanket and the pillow off the bunk and gave them to Riley, who thanked him and proceeded to blow his nose on the blanket.

  Jim stood up and left the cell, locking it behind him. He motioned to Kate, and the three of them padded silently down the hall, leaving the man beneath the bunk to crouch, shivering and terrified, waiting for the next attack.

  “Poor bastard,” Kate said.

  “Yeah,” Jim said. “But did he do it?”

  “Poor fucker,” Bobby said.

  He was sitting in front of the computer, one of the many electronic components of the console that occupied the center of the A-frame. He had a satellite uplink now and was the only person in the Park, apart from Dan and the school, to have instant Internet access. He tapped some keys and a different site popped up—one with a Department of Defense logo—one Jim was not entirely certain Bobby should have been able to get on, but he held his peace.

  “He was at Hue. Private Riley Higgins, Seventh Cav.” He shook his head, exited, and sat back. “No wonder the poor fucker’s crazy.”

  “I would remind you that this particular poor fucker killed Dina Willner, and may have killed Ruthe Bauman while he was at it,” Kate said tartly.

  “Poor pucker,” Katya said sadly, trying to twist a Rubik’s Cube on the floor at Bobby’s feet.

  “Listen to the girl, wouldja, she’s talking good as her daddy!” Bobby roared, snatching up his daughter and cradling her in his arms. Katya blinked up at him, surprised, and then gave him a blinding smile and a smacking kiss.

  Dinah sighed and looked at Jim and Kate. “Soup’s on.”

  It wasn’t soup; it was a big moose roast with the bone in, served with potatoes and carrots in a thick brown garlicky gravy and big hunks of fresh-baked brown bread. They dug in with a will.

  After dinner, when Katya was tucked safely into bed and had fallen obligingly into a deep sleep—“Not to be heard from again until three A.M.,” said her loving mother—the four of them gathered around the fireplace. Jim and Bobby drank coffee laced with Bobby’s favorite Kentucky whiskey, and Dinah sat Kate down on a chair from the kitchen table, tucked a dishcloth around her neck, and proceeded to trim her hair.

  “Is that normal behavior for post-traumatic stress syndrome, Bobby?” Kate asked him. “One minute, Riley Higgins was fine, conversing with me in a normal tone of voice. The next minute, he was screaming at the top of his lungs and hiding under the bed.”

  Bobby snorted. “There is no normal.” He contemplated his mug and sighed. “You know one of the reasons I wound up in Alaska?”

  “What?” Dinah bent Kate’s head forward and to one side to trim the hair on the back of her neck. Snip, snip. Black hair whispered down to the cloth. Jim was mesmerized.

  “Because,” Bobby said, “Alaska was home to one of two—count ’em, only two—U.S. senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Ernest Gruening, bless his bald head, whatever cloud he’s sitting on, I hope he’s got a babe on each arm and a gallon of sipping whiskey sitting in front of him that never goes dry.” He raised his mug in a toast.

  “I went over in ’68, same year as Higgins. Jesus, what a year. Started off with Tet—welcome to Vietnam, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out—Martin dead, Bobby dead, Chicago, the sit-ins, the riots, the demonstrations, Johnson quitting so he wouldn’t have to lose a war, Nixon in—Jesus squared—man, everybody was just so pissed off at everybody else. There was no peace to be found anywhere in this country. And then—‘one, two, three, what are we fightin’ for’—off I go to the Vietnam War. Only, wait, it wasn’t a war, because Congress never said it was, it was only a police action. And it sure as hell wasn’t like the goddamn government had made any effort to convince me that I was fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.”

  He wheeled over to the stove and brought back the coffeepot, pouring warm-ups all around. Jim, still engrossed in Kate’s haircut, had to be nudged to get his attention. Miraculously, Bobby did not call it to everyone’s attention at the top of his voice, for which Jim was profoundly thankful. “You know the difference between a war and a police action in the middle of the jungle, with the enemy planting mines and pongee sticks for you to walk on and your own zoomies hitting you with Agent Orange and napalm from overhead? I’ll tell you. Nothing.” He topped off his cup with the bottle of golden brown liquor that took pride of place on the end table next to the couch.

  “Still,” he said. “Sometimes we act like it’s the only war that ever happened, that ever mattered. Shit. Some battles in the Civil War, they lost more casualties in a day than we lost in our whole time in the Nam.”

  “So you’re not into self-pity,” Jim said. How the hell long did it take to cut a head of hair, for God’s sake? He shifted uncomfortably on the couch. “We got that. What about Higgins? What did his record say? Did something happen to him over there to make him like he is now?”

  “Jesus H. Christ, haven’t you been listening! Something happens to everybody over there, in every war!”

  Katya, used to Daddy’s bellow, slept serenely on, but Dinah gave him a severe look. More temperately, Bobby said, “Of course something fucking happened to him. He was stuck down in the middle of a jungle and people were shooting at him. Somebody shoved a rifle in his face and told him to shoot back. Maybe he shot a kid.” He cast an involuntary glance over his shoulder at Katya. “Maybe he fragged his looie. Maybe his looie did a Calley and he went along, and maybe the only way he can deal with the world is not to come back to it. It happens. It happens in every war.”

  Bobby pointed with his mug. “And you have to consider this, too—maybe nothing happened. Maybe he was just one of those poor bastards who can’t take combat, period. It was battle fatigue in World War Two, shell shock in World War One, and they probably called it something else in the Civil War and something else again in the War of the Roses. Who the hell knows? Guys like Higgins, some can deal, some can’t.” He rubbed the stubs of the legs sticking out over the edge of his wheelchair. “Some can’t,” he repeated.

  “He’s crazy as a bedbug now,” Jim said with a sigh. “I guess that’s what matters.” He looked back at Kate, and didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed to see Dinah untying the dishcloth and using it to flick hairs off Kate’s shirt.

  Kate was looking at Mutt, who was snoozing in front of the fireplace, her head resting on what looked like the jawbone of an ass, or maybe a woolly mammoth. “She let him scratch her head.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Mutt. She let Higgins scratch her head.”

  Jim looked at Mutt. “You been
stepping out on me, girl?”

  Mutt twitched an ear but did not otherwise respond.

  “The thing is,” Kate said, and then thought better of it. “Never mind.”

  “Never mind what?”

  Kate made a face. “She’s good about people, okay? She doesn’t like bad guys. And she let this guy scratch her head. It’s just—odd, that’s all.” She looked sorry she’d said anything.

  “Who wants dessert?” Dinah said briskly, folding the towel around the shears. “Apple pie, left over from the potlatch. Great potlatch, by the way, Kate. You done good.”

  “Yeah!” Bobby said. “That old broad would have had a hell of a good time. The true test of a good wake, if the deceased would have wanted to be there.”

  Dinah brought out pieces of pie adorned with whipped cream. It wasn’t as good as Ruthe’s rhubarb, but it wasn’t bad.

  “Listen, Bobby,” Kate said, “did you ever hear anything about Dina Willner being—ouch!” This when Jim kicked her, not gently, in the right shin. She glared. “What?”

  “Great pie,” Jim said, his mouth full. “Isn’t it?”

  Out on the porch, Jim said to Mutt, “So you let Higgins scratch your head, did you, girl?” He cast a look at Kate. “Considering the way she usually greets me, you must think I’m a prince.”

  “Why did you stop me from telling them about Dina and John Letourneau?”

  “Because we’re going to see Letourneau next, and I want to talk to him about it before Bobby broadcasts it on Park Air.” He paused. “He wasn’t at the potlatch.”

  “He doesn’t go to them, usually. Why do you want to talk to him about it at all? It’s ancient history. You said yourself that the marriage certificate was from twenty-five years ago. Jim!” She trailed after him to her snow machine, upon which she had found herself chauffeuring him around that afternoon. Mutt was lucky Kate had hooked up the trailer to bring the potlatch pictures into town. “And what’s with this ‘we?’”

  “It’s not that far. Stop whining and drive.”

  9

  They trod the steps to the broad expanse of split-wood deck, neatly shoveled, a wrought-iron table leg peeping from beneath a lashed-down blue plastic tarp in one corner. She knocked, far too conscious of Jim Chopin standing directly behind her.