A Fine and Bitter Snow

by Dana Stabenow

  They waited. He must have heard them coming up the river road.

  The door opened. “Hello, John,” Jim said.

  “Jim,” John said. He looked down. “Kate. You’re back. Come on in.” He stepped back and pulled the door wide. “Get you a drink? Or some coffee?”

  “Coffee’d be fine,” Jim said.

  John served it up in the same carafe on the same black lacquer tray, this time with a plate of Oreo cookies. “Got a sweet tooth,” he explained, and took a handful for himself before he sat down. Mutt sat next to Kate’s chair. She had not greeted Letourneau. He had not saluted her. “What can I do you for, Jim?”

  “It’s about Dina Willner.”

  Letourneau didn’t start or pale. “That a fact. And why would you think I would have anything to tell you about Dina Willner?”

  Kate, watching Jim, saw the split second it took him to make up his mind. “Maybe because you were married to her.”

  “Mmm.” Letourneau ate another cookie with studied nonchalance, but Kate, watching him now, got the impression that he was anything but unconcerned. “So we were. For about three seconds once, a long time ago.”

  “Twenty-five years ago, to be exact.”

  Letourneau’s eyes moved restlessly beneath heavy lids. “If you say so.”

  “The marriage certificate at Dina’s house says so.”

  “Ah. Surprised she kept that. Dina never was one to collect souvenirs.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “No,” Letourneau said coolly.

  “No?” Jim said.

  “No,” Letourneau repeated, and stood up. “If that’s all, I’ll say good night.”

  “John.” Jim sat where he was.

  For the first time that evening, John Letourneau’s voice rose. “I thought you had whoever killed her locked up in Tok.”

  “I thought I did.”

  Letourneau stiffened. “You thought you did? You mean you don’t think he did it?”

  “There are some loose ends.”

  There weren’t, or not any that would stand up in court, Kate thought, and wondered again why she and Jim were there.

  “Well, this isn’t one of them. My marriage to Dina had nothing to do with her death.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” Jim wasn’t the self-effacing type, but he could put on a pretty good show when he thought it might get him information he wouldn’t get any other way.

  The moment hung in the balance. It could have gone either way. Seconds ticked by.

  Letourneau sighed and sat down again. Kate walked over and refilled her mug, grabbing up a couple of cookies while she was at it. She wandered over to the window and stared out on the moonlit expanse of river, frozen hard and, due to the stresses and strains exerted by the subsurface current, anything but smooth. It was covered with snow machine tracks, swooping and winding around bergs and pinnacles. An open lead streamed gently, then vanished as she watched, the ice closing it off again.

  “What do you want to know?” Letourneau said. She turned to watch.

  Now that he had what he wanted, Jim added a little humility for effect. “I don’t know, John, I’m just fishing, really. It surprised me that Dina had been married.”

  Letourneau gave a short laugh. “It’d surprise a lot of people.”

  “I thought she came to the Park with Ruthe.”

  “She did.”

  “But…”

  John’s back was very straight. He seemed to Kate rather like a soldier marching into battle, facing heavy enemy fire yet determined to do his duty. “Back when I was just proving up on my homestead, back when Dina and Ruthe first bought the camp and started importing tourists, they got some who wanted to shoot with more than a camera. They farmed them out to me. They helped me get my start. I was ten years younger, but we had a lot in common, and there weren’t a hell of a lot of other people around in those days. Dina and I got to know each other.” He paused. “And then it got to be more than that.”

  “How did Ruthe feel about your relationship?”

  “I don’t know. I never talked to her about it.”

  “Come on, John.”

  “I don’t know, damn it,” Letourneau said sharply. “We eloped, just the two of us. Dina flew us to Ahtna. We got married by the magistrate there. We lasted a month.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m telling you it has nothing to do with Dina’s death.”

  There was a time to ease up. This wasn’t it. “What happened, John?”

  Letourneau swore beneath his breath and got up to pace to the fireplace. It was the first time Kate had ever seen him lose his composure. He turned and gave them an angry look. “I took her away from Ruthe. Ruthe took her back. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  There was present anger and remembered misery on John Letourneau’s face. There was also the whip of humiliation, an emotion in a man of John Letourneau’s age and upbringing that would matter more than the first two. He’d been outperformed by a lesbian. His woman had gone from him to another woman.

  “And since?” Jim said.

  Letourneau mastered his feelings and returned to his chair, making a business out of refilling his mug and biting into another cookie. “There is no since. We coexist. I even send customers their way. They do the same. We get along.”

  Kate remembered Dina tripping Letourneau with her cane on the Roadhouse dance floor ten days before. In Letourneau-speak, “get along” could mean anything short of murder.

  Or it could mean murder.

  It was a well-known maxim of law enforcement that the spouses of the unexpectedly deceased were always the prime suspects. The nearest and the dearest got the motive with the mostest. One of Jack Morgan’s Laws.

  But Jim Chopin had the prime suspect in custody. So what, Kate asked herself for the tenth time, were they doing here, exactly?

  “You got along, did you?” Jim said.

  Letourneau looked irritated. “What I said.”

  Jim pretended to consult a note on his pad. “That why you turned the Kanuyaq Land Trust into the IRS for using donations to politic instead of to buy land?”

  What? Kate almost said, and then Jim caught her eye and she thought better of it.

  Letourneau shrugged. “They were using money to lobby the legislature and Congress on environmental issues. Money raised specifically to underwrite land purchases in the Park. That’s just wrong.” He gazed at Jim benignly. “It was my public duty as a citizen to report that to the proper authorities.”

  Kate thought of what Dina’s reaction would have been to that statement and now understood completely why they had come to John’s lodge.

  “I also heard the judge kicked the case,” Jim said.

  Letourneau shrugged again, and this time he smiled, too. He had regained his equilibrium. Kate had the uneasy and entirely unwarranted suspicion that it was because they had missed something, something he didn’t want them to know, that he was glad that the conversation had turned into this channel, and that there were others they could have taken that would have been far more dangerous to him. “He disagreed with my attorneys. What can you do?”

  “I also heard—”

  “You hear a hell of a lot, now don’t you?”

  Unperturbed, Jim began again. “I also heard that you fought the increase in acreage to the wildlife refuge of the Park included in the d-2 lands bill.”

  “So? More wildlife refuge equals less hunting. I surely to heaven wasn’t alone in that.”

  “Put you up against Dina and Ruthe.”

  “So did a lot of things. Nature of the businesses we were in, respectively.”

  Jim pondered for a moment. “Dina Willner thought enough of you at one time to marry you. Think she might have left you anything in her will?”

  “What might that be,” John Letourneau said very dryly, “maybe a half interest in Camp Teddy?” He laughed. �
�I guess you don’t hear everything after all. Ruthe and Dina have joint rights of survivorship in Camp Teddy. When they’re both dead, it goes to the Kanuyaq Land Trust.”

  “You’ve seen their wills?”

  “No. Dina told me, back when we were married. Can’t imagine they changed them. Now,” John Letourneau said, rising to his feet and speaking with an air of finality, “I have told you more about my personal business than I have told anyone else, ever, and I still can see no way that it will help you convict someone already in custody. So I will say good night to you both.”

  As they left, Kate had the distinct impression that John Letourneau had learned more from them than they had from him. There was no reason for it to bother her, but it did.

  They drove a mile without speaking. With Mutt crowded on behind, Jim’s legs were so long that they wrapped around Kate’s on either side. His hands rode lightly at her waist, his body a solid wall of warmth at her back. She was thinking more kindly of the cramped quarters of the Cessna when he raised his voice over the noise of the engine. “What wasn’t he telling us?”

  So Jim had picked up on that, too. She did him the courtesy of not pretending not to know what he was talking about. “Everybody has secrets, Jim.”

  “And usually they get to keep them,” he said. “But not when it comes to murder. I’ll find out. I always do.”

  The man they had left alone in the elaborate lodge came to the same conclusion. An hour later, he sat at an old Royal manual typewriter and pecked out a letter. He signed it, and reached for the shotgun leaning against the desk.

  10

  “And we’re here, why again?” Kate said. She knocked her boots free of snow at the door of the Park Service headquarters on the Step, at the same time moving just outside Jim’s reach. “It’s late and I’m tired, and you know perfectly well Dan O’Brian had nothing to do with Dina’s death.”

  “I found him standing over the body,” Jim countered. “He might have seen something, heard something. I have to talk to him.”

  “You already have.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Yeah.”

  Her gaze sharpened. “What?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “A feeling, like maybe he’s not telling me everything.”

  “Crap. Dan O’Brian’s not a guy to withhold knowledge of a crime.”

  “Maybe,” he said in a level voice. “Maybe not.” He looked down at her and raised an eyebrow. “I told you I could have dropped you at Bobby’s on the way.”

  Like she would have let him interrogate Dan O’Brian without her being in the room. She stamped up the stairs without deigning to reply and then slammed into the building, nearly catching his nose in the door.

  Well, at least she wasn’t indifferent to his presence. He followed her down the hall, long legs eating up the distance between them.

  Dan was still in his office, head down in a stack of paperwork. He looked up when they came in. “Great,” he said, tossing down his pen. “Cheese it, it’s the fuzz.” Mutt trotted around the desk and bounced up for her usual exchange of sugar. “Except you, babe. You I’m happy to see anytime.” He directed an unfriendly gaze at Jim. “What?”

  Kate took up a strategic position perched on the corner of Dan’s desk. Jim sat opposite and cocked one heel on the other corner, a relaxed pose that deceived no one. “Tell me again. Everything you saw, everything you heard, every detail—I don’t care how insignificant you think it is.”

  “Jesus.” Dan pushed away from the desk and leaned back, rubbing his face hard with both hands. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Tell me again,” Jim repeated.

  Dan sighed sharply and dropped his hands to the desk in front of him. In a flat, dry voice, he repeated his story as if by rote. Due to Washington politics, his job was in jeopardy. He had consulted with friends (he didn’t look at Kate) and had decided to fight for it, which meant asking Park rats with influence to intercede on his behalf. Dina Willner and Ruthe Bauman were wired into the conservation movement, his relationship with them was good, and so they were naturals to ask for help. He drove to their cabin. He found them—he swallowed. “I found them like that,” he said. “Then I heard footsteps on the stairs, and I thought maybe this was who did it coming back.” He rubbed his head, which still sported a knot on it, although reduced in size. “After that, it was like the Keystone Kops or something. I yanked the door open the same time somebody shoved it open from the outside, and bam! The next thing I know, I’m on the floor next to Dina, looking up at you coming through the door. I thought it was you who smacked me.”

  “It was Dandy, bringing the mail.”

  Dan nodded. “Yeah, he told me.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Midafternoon. Say three, maybe? Three-thirty?”

  “Did you see anything?”

  “Other than stars? No.”

  “Hear anything?”

  Dan sighed. “I wish. I didn’t hear a damn thing.”

  Kate, watching, was alarmed to see that Jim’s instincts had not deceived him. There was something that Dan wasn’t saying. “Dan,” she said.

  “Goddamn it, Kate,” he said, his voice rising. “Dina and Ruthe were and are friends of mine. Do you think if I knew something I wouldn’t tell you? That I wouldn’t want to help you find who did this horrible thing and kick the shit out of them myself?”

  “No,” Kate said, her voice by contrast calm, even soothing. “I don’t think that.”

  And yet, as they walked down the path of hard-packed snow to where the snow machine sat waiting, she couldn’t help thinking that Dan O’Brian had sounded as defensive as he had angry. He had wanted them out of his office, had seemed almost desperate to see them go. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry. As if he had allowed them to stay, he might have said more than he wanted to.

  Hearing Jim take a breath, she said, “Don’t. Don’t even go there.”

  She’d seen what he had, and that was all he’d been looking for. He exhaled without speaking. In grim silence, they mounted up, this time with Mutt, in response to a barked order, hopping between them.

  Jim shifted on the couch in Bobby’s living room, restless. It didn’t help that he could hear the soft sound of Kate’s regular breathing, and that his overactive imagination could put that sound much closer to him without any effort at all.

  The fire crackled on the hearth. A log shifted and sparks flew upward, casting a faint glow over the dark head buried in the pillow on the other couch. It was a wide couch. Plenty of room. She probably wouldn’t even wake up if he slid in next to her. She probably wouldn’t even stir. Maybe she’d just roll over and he could curl into her spoon-fashion. He could slide his hands around her waist and pull her in tight. He thought of that ass against his crotch and had to shift again to make room for his erection. It didn’t even bother him anymore; it was like the damn thing was on automatic around her.

  He tried like hell not to think about it. Think about Riley Higgins instead, he told himself, and for a few moments he actually did. Bobby was right: The guy was a poor fucker, but that didn’t in and of itself make Higgins not a murderer. Crazy people did crazy things. Higgins, by empirical evidence newly observed, was manifestly crazier than a bedbug. He could have taken out both Dina and Ruthe in one of his rages.

  Kate stirred. He watched with hungry eyes as her body slid inside the sleeping bag. If he were lying beside her, he could slide his hands over her breasts. He tried to remember what they looked like, but everything had happened so fast that afternoon, he wasn’t sure he’d even seen them. If he moved slowly enough, if he was smooth enough, maybe he’d get a look, before she ripped his balls off and Mutt ripped his throat out and Bobby shot him dead.

  He rolled over and punched his pillow into a new shape. What about Dan O’Brian? What was going on there? He had worked cases with Dan O’Brian, he’d hoisted more than a few beers in his company, and he knew the man. Or thought he did. The last th
ing he wanted was to bring Dan O’Brian in and sweat him, but he was going to have to if Dan didn’t open up. He didn’t even want to think about the repercussions that would follow, both for Dan and for himself. He could just imagine what Billy Mike would have to say. And, oh god, Auntie Vi.

  He didn’t really think Mutt would rip his throat out. He wasn’t 100 percent certain about Bobby. He was pretty sure Kate would rip his balls off, though.

  Or not. She certainly had responded to him that afternoon at the cabin. No matter what she had said or done afterward, no matter how much she was avoiding the issue, no matter that she was twisting herself into a pretzel to deny the interlude, she had been with him all the way. He wondered how long it would take to get her back to that place.

  On the plane back to Niniltna, he’d said, “So we’re not going to talk about it?” Silence had been her answer. Okay, fine. He probably would want conversation somewhere down the line, but just at the moment, all he wanted was a month in bed, just the two of them, and the rest of the world held at bay with a big red KEEP OUT sign. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask.

  He wondered if, in the course of a normal sexual relationship, she was a talker or the quiet, intense type. The first time, she had called him Jack. The second time, she hadn’t said anything at all. Of course, he had not been spectacularly articulate himself.

  He wondered what her favorite position was. He’d had some imaginative partners in his life. But face it, Chopin, he told himself. If acquiring Kate Shugak as a partner means the missionary position for the foreseeable future, you’ll take it and love it.

  He wondered how long and what it took to make her come. He wondered if she screamed when she did. Well, he kind of knew the answers to both those questions now. He stifled a groan and rolled over on his back.

  He wondered if he was ever going to get laid again in his lifetime.

  Why her? he asked himself for what might have been the thousandth time. Why this one stubborn, independent, irritating, exasperating woman? She was certainly far too short, especially for him. They’d look like Mutt and Jeff. Where had all the tall blondes in his life suddenly gone? The tall, charming, amenable, accommodating blondes, the ones who were waiting for him when he got to their houses and who let him go again without question the morning after?