Midnight come again (38 page)

Juneau seemed to have that inevitable and invariable effect on elected officials, he reflected. Or maybe it was just political office everywhere, because the nation as a whole seemed to be in about the same shape. Substitute Washington, D.C. for Juneau and what did you get? Bill Clinton for president. Jesus. It wasn't that Clinton was a rounder that bothered him so much, it was that he was so awful goddamn inept at it.

If you're going to philander, he thought now, for crissake do it with some style.

"So we have to wait until he takes a shot at her before you'll do anything?" Darlene said.

"It's a big step from writing a nasty letter to someone popping off with a thirty-ought-six." He held up a hand to forestall further commentary.

"What I will do is put the word out to all the local law enforcement agencies that your candidate's getting hate mail, that's it's personal, and, yes, that's it is increasing in amount and degree."

She gave an impatient snort. "What's that get us?"

He was starting to get a little annoyed. "Nothing, if you don't call ahead to let the local agencies know when you'll be there." She glared, and he sighed to himself. No point in getting the person who was very probably going to sit at the right hand of the next senator from District 41 mad at him. "I'll e-mail all the troopers in the area, and all the police chiefs. I'll give you a list of names and numbers, and I'll tell them you'll call when you know your candidate will be speaking in their jurisdiction. You need to call every time, Darlene," he said with quiet force. "They can't plan to look out for you if they don't know you're coming. They've got jobs, full-time ones, already." He thought about the suicide by cop in Valdez. "Full-time jobs," he repeated. "You releasing this information to the press?" She hesitated, and he groaned. "Don't tell me you think that this is going to get her the sympathy vote?"

She had the grace to flush. "All you'll do is get him off," he warned.

"That's what he wants, attention, film at eleven."

"Or she," she reminded him.

He looked at her in sudden suspicion. She read his thought before he could speak it out loud. "Fuck you, Chopin," she said, her voice rising.

"Okay," he said, patting the air. "Okay. Sorry. Just a thought, a dumb one, I admit, but--"

"As if I would--as if Anne would--just fuck you, Chopin!" She shot to her feet and marched to the door. Hand on the knob, she turned and said, spitting the words like knives, "Thanks for nothing. If--when Anne gets into office, if this asshole doesn't kill her first, we'll remember this when it comes time to look at the budget for the Department of Public Safety. I'd say trooper salaries and step rates for Bush posts are way overdue for review."

"Darlene!"

His voice, cracking like a whip, stopped her halfway out the door. She looked back, very ready to escalate hostilities.

"If you're that worried, if you really think Anne's in danger ... "

She didn't move. "What?"

"What about hiring security for the campaign?"

"You mean like guards?"

"I mean like one guard." The one he was thinking of wouldn't need any help.

She let go of the handle, and the door hissed closed on its hydraulic hinge. "You suggesting someone in particular?"

He just looked at her and, being a well-trained law enforcement professional of intensive and lengthy experience, was able to pinpoint the exact moment when realization dawned.

Also because she said, "Oh fuck, no." "She knows the Park," Jim said.

"Who she isn't related to she's drinking buddies with." He thought of Amanda and Chick, Bobby and Dinah, Bernie. Old Sam, the quintessential Alaskan old fart, Auntie Vi, the quintessential Alaskan old fartette.

Dan O'Brien, the only national-park ranger in Alaska to survive the change of federal administrations and gain the affection if not the actual respect of Park rats. George Perry the air taxi pilot, next to whom Jim had stood on that airstrip south of Denali last September. He banished that memory the next instant, or told himself he had. "If she was a drinking kind of woman, that is."

"Not her."

"She's probably related to Anne, come to that."

Darlene's voice rose. "Not her, Jim."

He was surprised at her vehemence. "Who else?" he said. "She's a teetotaler. She a local. She's a Native. She has a reputation--"

"Oh yeah, she's got a reputation, all right, a well-deserved one."

"Took the words right out of my mouth." Curious, the curse of any good cop, he went fishing. "You sound like you know her."

She opened her mouth, met his eyes, and closed it again. "I knew her," she said at last.

He waited hopefully. No weapon in the cop's arsenal worked better than the expectant silence.

"We went to school together."

He raised his eyebrows. "I didn't know you were from Niniltna."

"In Fairbanks. UAF."

He gave a neutral kind of grunt, and waited again. In the ensuing stony silence, he wondered why the feud. If one person hating a second person who, so far as Jim knew, was indifferent to the first person's existence, could be called a feud. Did Kate crib from Darlene's test?

Wear Darlene's favorite sweater without permission? Steal Darlene's boyfriend? It irritated him that he would like to know, to add to his fund of Kate Shugak lore. Said irritation moved him to say, "Just a suggestion."

"A bad one," she snapped.

"No," he said, suddenly weary. "Just a suggestion."

DANA STABENOW is the author of nine previous Kate Shugak mysteries as well as two featuring Alaska State Trooper Liam Campbell, in addition to three science fiction novels. A graduate of the University of Alaska at Anchorage with a BA in journalism and an MFA, she won the Edgar Award for her first novel, A

Cold Day for Murder, and recently began writing a monthly column for Alaska magazine. Stabenow was born, and still lives in Anchorage, Alaska. Visit the author at www. stabenow. com and St. Martin's Minotaur at www. minotaurbooks. com.