A grave denied (38 page)

“Are you okay?” she said.

“Oh, I’m fine. I’m peachy keen, I’m jim—you should pardon the expression—dandy, I’m good to go. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” she said, wary now.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

“No, I’m not.” He rose to pace. Mutt, dislodged, uttered a protest, which was ignored.

There wasn’t much room for more than two strides, so he turned a lot. Mutt and Kate watched him, heads swiveling like they were at a tennis match. “Virgil has also confessed to loving his wife. That’s it, that’s his sole reason for two murders and three attempts. He loved his wife and he didn’t want her to go to jail for murdering her babies. The thing is, they were his babies, too. And they wanted children, he told me so.”

“There is something called postpartum depression,” Kate said.

He waved an impatient hand. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve read the cases, there have been enough of them in the news lately, and I’ve responded to more than one SIDS death. I could understand Telma having postpartum depression, what I can’t understand is her having it five times with five babies and her husband standing by for burial detail every time without turning a hair.”

“You think he didn’t want them? You think he maybe killed them?”

He shook his head and came to rest in front of the window. Looking down at the parking lot, he said in a quieter tone, “No. I think she killed them and I think he buried them. You know, Kate, I have seen some shit in my time. Cops get their faces rubbed in the worst of human nature every goddamn day of our working lives, and I am sorry as hell to report that a lot of the time it has something to do with somebody loving somebody else. Hell of a testament to the power of love, don’t you think?” He turned to face her. “I asked him. Why, Virgil, I said. Why did you do it? I love my Telma, he says back to me. Jesus.
He loved his wife,
was all he could say. Well, the hell with that. Kate?”

“Jim?” she said, still wary.

“I’ve been chasing you.”

“I’ve noticed,” she said cautiously.

“Lately, it hasn’t seemed all that one-sided.”

“Lately, it hasn’t been,” she said.

“It’s over,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m getting off this ride,” he told her. He picked up his ball cap and yanked it down over his eyes. “If this is what love’s all about, I don’t want any part of it.” He paused. “I’m sorry if I led you on, made you imagine there was any more to it than a good time.”

She looked at him with eyes a little wider than normal but otherwise with no expression.

“I take full responsibility,” he said doggedly. “I don’t know, maybe I just wanted you because Jack had you and I couldn’t. And then Jack was gone and I could. I’ve always wanted you, hell, you have to know that. But you’re a serious woman, and you tend to be with one man at a time. That’s not me. I’m not that man.”

He looked at her, clearly bracing himself for an attack. She took a long, slow, careful breath, inhale, exhale, and felt a triumph so fierce well up inside her breast that it was hard to speak around it. She made the effort, and managed a mild, neutral, “If that’s how you feel.”

“That’s how I feel.” He would make it be how he felt if it was the last thing he ever did.

“Okay,” she said, praying he was out of the room before she burst out laughing.

“Love doth make fools of us all,” he added.

“Huh?” Kate said.

“Yip?” Mutt said.

“Don’t it,” he said, and the door swung shut behind him.

She waited until she heard his footsteps recede down the hall before lying back on the bed. She stared at the ceiling, and the laughter that welled up was so loud and lasted so long that the nurse came down from her station to see what was causing Kate’s heart rate to speed up on the monitor. When she saw the tears on Kate’s face, she rushed forward, all concern.

Kate waved her off. “I’m fine, believe me, I’ve never been better.” She beamed and scrubbed her cheeks. Her head still hurt but otherwise she felt fine, just fine. “All men are morons.”

The nurse’s face cleared, but she remained cautious. “That would be a given. Still. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ’em.”

Kate felt that it had been worth getting hit on the head with a shovel just to hear those words. “Where’s my pants?” she said.

“So I go out there, all concerned, thinking that Vanessa might have been raped by Dreyer,” Kate said, “and it turns out he was moving on up to blackmail.”

“Fucking insane,” Bobby said.

“Hagberg or Dreyer?”

“Over the fucking rainbow, both of them.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Kate said. She was at Bobby’s house, a pit stop between the plane ride from Ahtna to Niniltna and the long drive home. “It’s funny, too. Before I went out there I was thinking about Dreyer and all the opportunities he’d have for blackmail. He was in and out of our homes every day, not to mention the post office, the cafe, the Roadhouse. The opportunities for picking up information were endless. Hell, I don’t know why he didn’t hit Keith Gette up for a few bucks.”

Bobby smiled smugly. “And why would he think he could do that?”

“They’re growing dope in the Gettes’ old greenhouse, Bobby,” Kate said. “What, you didn’t know?”

The smug smile vanished. “They are not,” he said indignantly. “They’re growing herbs.”

“Herbs?” she said with heavy sarcasm. “Herbs? Is that what we’re calling marijuana these days?”

“No, it’s what we call parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,” he said with equal sarcasm. “They’re gonna dry ‘em and sell them on their website.”

“Website?”

“Yeah, the one Dinah’s helping them build, www-dot-praiseofcooks-dot-com. Or dot-org. Dot-something, anyway. That ‘praise of cooks’ thing comes from the Charlemagne quote,” he added parenthetically, “you know the one.”

“No,” Kate said, and wondered if perhaps she had left the hospital before she should have. “Can’t say as I do.”

“ ‘What is an herb?” Alcuin his tutor asked him,“ Bobby declaimed, with gestures. ”And Charlemagne answered, “The friend of physicians and the praise of cooks.” “

“Herbs,” Kate said. She was skeptical, not necessarily of the quotation but certainly of what Keith and Oscar were really growing up on the old Gette homestead. A cop’s instinct to expect the worst died hard. “And you know this how?”

“Bonnie down at the post office in Niniltna sent them to me when they asked her who knew how to set up a computer and a satellite dish.”

Kate digested this for a moment. “Have you actually seen this alleged parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme growing?”

“No, but they gave me some, and a couple of recipes.” Bobby assumed a virtuous expression. “Really, Kate, I don’t think you should go around assuming the worst of people. Just because — ” And then he had to duck when she threw a pillow at him.

“Besides,” he said, recovering his dignity, as well as rolling strategically out of range, “if Dreyer was going to blackmail them, he’d think of something much better.”

“Something better than growing marijuana?”

“Yeah,” Bobby said, and started laughing. “They’re gay, Kate.”

“Gay?”

“Gay,” Bobby said, nodding, a broad grin on his face. “Jesus Christ, how naive are you, Shugak? They’re a couple.”

“A couple?”

He lay back in his chair, helpless with laughter. Dinah was laughing, too. Even Katya was getting in on the act.

“Yeah, yeah, so my gaydar isn’t as good as some other people’s,” Kate said when the laughter finally died down to a couple of hiccups and the odd tear.

“Jesus, you don’t need gaydar when they’re practically necking right in front of you,” Bobby said. He rubbed the heel of his hand across his face. “Man, I haven’t laughed like that in I don’t know how long. Thanks, Kate.”

“Anytime,” Kate said dryly.

“Seen Jim lately?” Dinah said.

Kate’s face went opaque. “He came to the hospital to clear up some questions about the case.”

“Oh.” Something going on there, Dinah thought, and exchanged a look with her husband. Turning back she caught a very small, very odd smile on Kate’s face. She would have pursued it to its source, but Kate was talking again. “So Jeffrey went home.”

“Yes, finally, the prick did go home,” Bobby said.

“Alone,” Kate said.

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” Bobby said. “You actually think I should have gone with him?”

“Oh, man.” Kate sighed and shook her head. She got to her feet and went to the window, looking at the Quilaks for inspiration. She stretched a little, wincing as new skin rubbed against her shirt. “I ever tell you how Emaa died?”

She heard the whisper of rubber tires as he wheeled up next to her. “No.”

“It was in the middle of AFN. She wasn’t feeling well, kept rubbing her left arm. For crissake, I trained as an EMT when I worked in Anchorage, I even went on a few runs. I know the signs, but I didn’t see them on my grandmother.” She closed her eyes. “She was supposed to make a speech on subsistence in front of the whole convention, in front of Alaska Natives from Metlakada to Point Lay. Hundreds of people in the room, and she was such a giant, they all wanted to hear what she had to say. It would define the issue for a lot of diem, they’d go home quoting her.”

She took a deep breath. “So she’s feeling lousy, and she hands it off to me.” She looked down at him, her smile wavering. “Just walks away, and leaves me standing there with no speech and no track record and no profile to speak of, not compared to hers.”

She was wrong about that last, but Bobby held his peace.

“So I told them some yarn about shooting a moose in my front yard that year. They held still for it, they even put their hands together for it.”

Bobby somehow managed to hide his amazement.

“Right after, a woman I know, she’s—well.” Kate gave up on trying to describe Cindy Sovalik. “Someone I met when I was doing that job for Jack in Prudhoe Bay. She said I should check on Emaa. Well, that was what she meant, anyway. So I did.”

She took a long, shaky breath. “I got the maid to let me into her hotel room, and she was just lying there, kind of frowning. And already cool to the touch.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets and turned to look at Bobby. “She handed off to me, did it in public so everyone could see that she expected me to take up where she left off, and then marched off to die.”

There followed a bleak silence, broken when Bobby cleared his throat. “I don’t see that you could have done anything but what you did.”

“No.” A ghost of a laugh. “Emaa called the shots in her death, the same way she called the shots in her life.”

“Then I don’t get it,” Bobby said. “My father’s calling the shots here, too.”

“You’re letting him.”

He looked at her, angry. “I’m not letting him dictate to me, if that’s what you mean.”

“Sure you are. You let him push you out of your own home, let him push you into the army, let him push you all the way to Vietnam. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you chose to rebuild your life in Alaska, about as far away from Tennessee as you could get and still be in the same country.”

“But he wants me to come home.”

“Don’t go home for him. Go home for yourself. He helped make you what you are, Bobby, like it or not. Go home and say good-bye.” She paused, and said slowly, “I didn’t get the chance to say good-bye to Emaa. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

There was another long silence. From her seat on the couch, cradling a sleeping Katya, Dinah looked from one stubborn face to the other, biding her time.

“I just hate the thought of doing anything Jeffie wants me to,” Bobby said at last.

And there it was. “This is a guy who’s never been out of the state of Tennessee before, right?” Dinah said.

Bobby snorted. “I’d be surprised if he’s ever been fifty miles from his own front doorstep.”

“Until now,” Dinah said. “He was here, though. Humbling himself to you, begging you to come home.”

“Ordering,” Bobby said, “ordering. There’s a difference.”

“Whatever it sounded like, he was begging. His father, your father is dying. He could even be dead by now.”

There was a brief silence. Finally Bobby said, “Dad always did like him best.”

Relieved, Dinah laughed a little harder than the jest deserved.

Bobby looked at her. “So you think I ought to go home, too?”

Dinah chose her words carefully, knowing they would live to haunt her marriage if she got them wrong. “I want a life with you, Bobby, a long one. You brought a lot of baggage with you. I don’t care, it’s who you are.” She smiled a little. “It’s part of why I love you. But I also think it’s time to get rid of some of it, so it doesn’t weigh us down.”

“Why, Dinah,” Bobby said, “that’s fucking poetry.”

Dinah reddened. “I mean it, Clark.”

Bobby, sober now, said, “I know you do, Dinah.” He rolled over to her and lifted both her and the baby into his lap.

Kate walked past them. “You’ll think about it?” she heard Dinah say.