Midnight come again (6 page)

There was a black-and-white cartoon by Wiley blown up big and tacked to the wall behind the bar. "Bert's Bid For a Utopian Society," read the caption. The drawing showed an irascible-looking old fart hunched over a cane, sitting next to a sign which read, everybody shut up and DO things MY way! "Bert's" had been altered to read

"Bernie's."

The cartoon was right next to the sign which read, free throws win ball games. Bemie coached the high school basketball teams, men's and women's, and the shop class had made the sign a class project the first time they took the Class C state championship. It was two feet square, made of three-quarter inch plywood, the lettering burned neatly into the wood, with a glossy varnished finish. The occasion of the sign's presentation was the only time Jim could remember Bernie allowing anybody underage in the Roadhouse, as the sign had been escorted by all forty-two members of Niniltna High School.

Jim raised his glass in a silent toast. Bernie, like Bobby, had burrowed so deep into the Park that both men had become part of the fabric of it, as solid as the Quilak Mountains, as essential as the salmon in the Kanuyaq. Unlike himself, the deus ex machina who flew in for a day and flew out the next, no responsibilities except for those delineated by statute, and god forbid no emotional ties beyond a lusty romp between the thighs of a series of willing Park wenches. It was a life he had crafted for himself with care, it suited him exactly, he had never wanted any other.

Unsettled by the trend of his thoughts, Jim said abruptly, "Have you seen her, Bernie?"

"Who?" Bernie said, frowning down at a stubborn spot on the bar.

"My great-aunt Fanny. Kate Shugak, asshole. You seen her lately?"

Bernie scrubbed harder at the spot. "Nope."

"When was the last time you did see her?"

Bernie stopped scrubbing and stared at the ceiling for inspiration.

"Gosh, I don't know. When was that?"

"Bernie." Something in Jim's voice made the bartender meet his eyes, albeit reluctantly. "It's important. When was the last time you saw her?"

Bernie looked around. The nearest people were a couple of tourists necking at a table near the door. If he read the signs right, they'd be asking to rent one of the cabins out back in the next five minutes. They were dressed in a yuppie version of safari chic; jackets by Banana Republic, jeans by Eddie Bauer, boots by L.L. Bean. Bernie mentally raised his room rates twenty percent for the night.

Two old men were shooting pool and arguing over every shot, and that was it for this last Saturday in June, typical for the beginning of fishing season, a time of year the trooper in Jim loved because people were making money on the water instead of spending it in bars. Far fewer calls to domestic disputes during the summertime, and domestic disputes were the calls dreaded most by any law enforcement official. Jim had often wondered if it would be possible to keep men and women separated year round, with time off for good behavior, and conjugal visits, of course. It would make his job so much easier.

Either that or prohibit the manufacture, sale and consumption of alcohol entirely, which hadn't worked real well the last time the country had tried it. And wasn't working real well, come to think of it, in those Alaskan Bush communities that had chosen to go damp or dry during the last ten years. Mostly because they wouldn't stay damp or dry, in spite of an eighty percent drop in alcohol-related crimes such as drunk driving, robbery, sexual assault and murder when they did. He remembered the last bootlegger to inhabit the Park, and his removal, vividly. The Kate Shugak Extraction Method was quick, he'd give it that.

As well as effective. And longlasting. There hadn't been a bootlegger within a hundred miles of Niniltna since.

"She was in here in March," Bernie said, and Jim snapped to attention.

"I don't know when she came, I don't know when she left. We were busy as hell that night--breakup, you know how it gets around then--so by the time I got over to her table she wasn't there anymore. Weird."

"What's weird?"

Bernie shrugged, brow creased. "She always sits at the bar. This time she was at that table." He pointed at the small circular table tucked into the corner farthest from the bar. He frowned, and began scrubbing the bar again. "First time she's ever been in here that she hasn't even bothered to say hello." Take a number, Jim thought. "She meet anybody?"

"Not that I saw."

"Who was in that night?"

"Oh, hell." Bernie abandoned the rag. "Everybody. Old Sam, Demetri Totemoff--he's moving around pretty good, now--the Grosdidier brothers drinking down their weekly case of Michelob. Vi and Joy were having their quilting bee, knocking back the Irish coffees like Brazil was running out of beans the next day. The belly dancers were in the back room, the Presbyterian congregation had the big table. Mac Devlin was hustling for mining leases, like usual, making one Oly last all night.

Ben and Cindy Bingley."

Jim raised an eyebrow. "Cindy come unarmed?" Bernie smiled. "They're behaving themselves nowadays. Couple of beers, couple of dances and they're outta here. Whatever Kate said to them last spring must have took."

"Who else?"

"Dandy Mike and Dan O'Brian." Bemie grinned. "Both of them chasing Cheryl Jeppsen, I might add."

Jim stared. "Cheryl Jeppsen? Cheryl Jeppsen of the Kanuyaq River Little Chapel? Cheryl Jeppsen the I-beensavednowhowabout-you? Cheryl Jeppsen, the self appointed moral arbiter of all things godly in the Park? Dan and Dandy are chasing that Cheryl Jeppsen?"

Bernie chuckled. "Cheryl's fallen off the born-again wagon. She walked out on her husband and got a job changing sheets at Vi's bed and breakfast. In her off time, she's catching up on what she'd been missing, and from all I hear tell, she'd been missing it a lot." "I'll just bet she had," Jim said. A reminiscent smile crossed his face.

"I remember her before she ate the apple." "So do I," Bernie said, and looked around hastily to see if Enid had come in without him noticing.

His wife had an unnerving habit of sneaking up behind him when he was in the middle of conversations just like this one, and hearing all the wrong parts out of context, too.

"So? Who else?"

"God, Jim, I don't know, everybody. The Moonins, the Bartletts, the Kvasnikofs. George Perry. Billy Mike. Everybody." Great, Jim thought.

Too many people to talk to tonight, even if he could track them down in the middle of fishing season. Well, it had been a forlorn hope at best.

He rose. "Thanks, Bernie. I better be going while I've still got light to fly."

"Why are you looking for her? There isn't something going wrong with the trial, is there? Nobody trying to beg off on a technicality?" Bernie's words were light. His tone wasn't.

Jim shook his head. "Nope. They're up for murder times six, attempted murder times four, assault and accessory to attempted rape. If they were found guilty on only one charge, they'd still be going down."

"Christ." The bar rag swiped slowly down the gleaming surface of the bar, and back up again. "I didn't know about the attempted rape." The rag stilled, and Bernie looked up, all levity gone. "What the hell happened out there, Jim?"

"What have you heard?"

"Only what Old Sam and Demetri have said, which isn't much, because they're both witnesses and can't talk about it, or that's what they say.

Myself, I think they'd just rather not, which tells me a whole lot right there." He paused, hopeful, but Jim said nothing, and he sighed and continued. "The word is that George organized one of his back-to-the-basics big-game hunts for a bunch of rich Euro cowboys, and Kate, Demetri, Old Sam and Jack signed on to guide for him. Next thing we know, Old Sam's home with his leg broke and his arm shot up, Demetri's in the hospital with a perforated lung, and Kate's back on her homestead with the ' Visitors' sign up in neon letters twenty feet high.

And then people started bringing newspapers into the bar, and we heard about Jack. And the rest of them."

"Yeah."

"So what the hell happened?" "What they said. What you read." Jim drained his glass and dropped a couple of ones on the bar. "Gotta go."

"Jim?"

"I'll find her, Bernie. You know how she is, she won't make it easy, but I'm a trained law enforcement professional." Jim pulled his cap on with unnecessary force and screwed it down over his ears. "I'll find her."

"Good," Bernie said.

Jim wasn't sure if Bernie believed him.

He wasn't sure he believed himself.

Bobby dropped him off at the airstrip just as George Perry was on his last approach of the night into Niniltna. Jim climbed back out of the Jet Ranger and waited for the Super Cub to taxi up to the hangar.

The pilot saw him as soon as he stepped down from the plane. "Hey, Jim."

"Hey, George."

"What brings you into the Park on such a fine night?" George tried to smile, but the events of the preceding fall had taken their toll on him, too, and it was a poor effort. Both men couldn't help but remember the scene that had met their horrified gazes on the airstrip at George's hunting lodge south of Denali National Park. There had been too many bodies, seven in all, one of which Kate had to be separated from forcibly before they could load it into the plane.

The dead had outnumbered the living by one. Jim didn't like to think about it even now, with ten months between him and that terrible day.

By his expression, neither did George. Jim got right to the point. "Have you seen Kate lately?"

George, in the act of opening the Cub's cowling, paused. "No."

"When was the last time you did see her?"

George turned to face Jim, a spark of anger lighting his eyes. "They aren't going to let them go, are they? You didn't forget to read them their rights or something stupid like that, did you?" "We aren't letting them go," Jim said wearily, "and no, I didn't forget to read them their rights. I'm looking for Kate, is all. When was the last time you saw her?"

George stared at him long enough to decide Jim was telling the truth. He turned back to the cowling. "I don't know. It's been a while."

"Try to remember. It's important, or I wouldn't ask."

George's shoulders slumped. "Look, she's been through enough, all right?

Leave her alone." Old Sam had said almost those same exact words when they had landed at the strip ten months before. Leave her be.

"I need to know where she is, George."

"I don't know where she is," George said. His words had the ring of truth to them, but Jim had been a state trooper for more than fourteen years and he knew when someone was telling him the truth but not all of it. He waited.

With a muffled curse George slapped an open hand against the Cub's fuselage, causing the fabric to undulate in little waves. "I saw her in March, at Bernie's. She said she was leaving the Park for a while. She asked me for a lift to Anchorage. I took her that night."

"Where'd you drop her off?"

"Spernak, at Merrill. Last I saw, she was heading for a phone to call a cab."

"She say where she was going?"

"No."

"She say how long she'd be gone?"

"No."

"Okay." Jim paused. "When was this, do you remember? What day, I mean?"

"The fifteenth. The ides of March." A glimmer of a smile. "Why I remember."

There was something else, though. "What?" Jim said. "What else, George?"

George took a long, deep, steadying break. "Something wrong with her arm. Her right arm, above the elbow. She had it wrapped up, but there was blood seeping through. She wouldn't let me take a look."

"What did she say happened?"

"I knew she wouldn't tell me, so I didn't ask."

They stood without speaking, trying not to think back to the last time they'd seen Kate Shugak hurt. "Okay," Jim said finally. "Thanks, George."

George watched the tall trooper walk to his helicopter and climb in. The rotors whined into motion.

"Bring her home, Jim," he muttered as the Ranger lifted off and headed high, fast and northeast for Tok.

"Just bring her home." He don't talk right, don't Know when to sit down, get up. He make too much talk talk.

--Gisakk Come, He Go We'll have to go in without her," Gamble said.

"What do you mean we, white man?" Jim said. "I'm the one you're asking to go into a Bush village--"

"Over five thousand population," the FBI man protested. "That isn't exactly a village."

"--with no backup, not even the local cops--"

"Some of the local cops may be in on it. We won't know which ones. We can't risk it, not right away, not until we know more."

"--undercover--"

"The uniform does have a way of alerting certain people to the presence of a police officer, now, doesn't it?" The FBI agent gave Jim a benign smile and folded his hands over his belly, a comfortably plump little shelf at odds with the thin torso, the stick legs and the spindly arms.

The toupee was such a mismatch that at first Jim had thought Gamble was wearing a beret.