Restless in the Grave (24 page)

Bernie grinned. “Well, there was that time those two pipeliners showed up on the Alyeska bulldozer.…”

Jim was indignant. “What was that, six years ago? Seven?” He reflected. “Besides, that wasn’t my sidearm, it was his.”

“Whatever.” Bernie polished the bar, did he but know it, in almost the exact same massaging movement Bill Billington was lavishing on her own bar six hundred miles south-southwest. Some things are universal. “Hear Kate’s out of town.”

Jim toyed with the ice in his glass. “Yeah. Got a job.”

Bernie grunted. “Can you say where?”

“Rather not.” He’d rather not think about it, come to that. With every day that passed, Liam Campbell grew more handsome and more charming in his memory, and Jim wasn’t even gay.

“You lonely?” Jim looked up to see a smile curling the corners of Bernie’s mouth. “There’s a new girl out at—”

“I’m fine,” Jim said, with probably a little more emphasis than necessary. “What do you hear from out the mine?”

Bernie shrugged. “Same old. They keep drilling and the mine keeps getting bigger, and meantime the price of gold keeps going up. Looks like it’s here to stay.” He raised his head to look around the barnlike room that under his stewardship had hosted belly dancers, Big Bumpers, Baptist congregations, quilting circles, Kanuyaq 300 Trail Committee meetings, at least one shoot-out with live ammunition, and enough just plain elbow benders to turn a healthy profit. The Suulutaq miners hadn’t changed the ambience all that much, although his women customers from twenty to fifty had never been so swamped with attention. He was pretty sure a couple of them were selling it in one of his cabins out back, one throw at a time. Well, what the hell. Lots of goodwill and maybe one small thrill, wasn’t that how the song went? And everyone stopped in for a drink afterwards. “It hasn’t been bad for business, that I can tell you.”

Jim grunted. “Mine, either.” He drank. “Anybody from the mine management side of things drop in? Truax? Like that?”

Bernie stopped massaging the bar. “I figured this was more than a social call. What specifically is it you’re after, Jim?”

Jim examined the bottom of his glass, avoiding Bernie’s eyes. “I heard they’ve been acquiring some new investors.”

“Yeah?”

Jim nodded.

“Well, I woulda thought they already had all the investment money they needed,” Bernie said, “but that’s a decision way above my pay grade.” At Jim’s look he said, “Sure, I bought some Global Harvest stock. You didn’t?”

Jim shook his head.

“Well, you should. For one thing, you’d get an annual report, which would answer a lot of questions.”

Jim thought of the list of securities that had come with his portion of his father’s estate. He wondered if he, too, would now be receiving annual reports. The prospect was depressing.

“In fact,” Bernie said, watching him, “I just got the latest GHRI annual report in the mail.”

“You did?” Jim sat up. “Could I take a look?”

*   *   *

The afternoon was taken up with a break-in at Camp Teddy’s (“It’s not the theft, Jim,” a mightily pissed Ruthe Bauman told him, “I can replace what’s stolen. It’s the damages. Who rips a toilet out of the wall?”), a late lunch of moose tongue sandwiches at Bobby and Dinah’s, a show-and-tell at the end of Career Day at Niniltna High, and a domestic dispute between Alma and Derendy Shugak, which resulted in the arrest of her ex-husband for Assault 2, Assault 3, Assault 4, and Criminal Mischief 3. Jim deposited Derendy in a cell at the post and left Alma at the Grosdidier brothers’ clinic.

He was halfway home and looking forward to dinner ready when he walked in the door—it was Johnny’s turn to cook—when a phone call diverted him back to Niniltna and a report of vandalism at the high school. It wasn’t anything that hadn’t happened a hundred times before the introduction of cell phones into the Park, that hadn’t been previously handled capably by its principal every single one of those times. Jim wrote up a report and drove home thinking with longing of those halcyon cell-free days—Jesus, were they only a month ago?

He thought about calling Kate, but she’d been up pretty late the night before and he really didn’t want to wake her up in the middle of her first real sleep since she’d got to Newenham.

News of the partnership between Erland Bannister and Axenia Shugak Mathisen could always wait.

Seventeen

JANUARY 20

Newenham

Six hundred miles to the south-southwest, Liam Campbell was up all night dealing with the Evelyn Grant shooting. She was in the local hospital, which was the regional hospital for Southwest Alaska so the care was of a pretty sophisticated standard for the Bush. The opinion of the doctor on call that evening was that the prognosis was good and that so long as Evelyn woke up soon, there should be no fears for her eventual full recovery. The bullet had by some miracle ricocheted off her eleventh floating rib through the intercostal space between the eleventh and twelfth floating ribs and lodged just under the skin on her lower back. “Bizarre things bullets do inside bodies,” the doc said. He sounded admiring.

“You’ll let me know as soon as she wakes up?”

“I will,” Doc Stanford replied. “Is it true that Gabe McGuire was the one who found her?”

Liam hadn’t mentioned Gabe’s presence at the scene to anyone, and he was dead certain Kate hadn’t said anything to anyone at all. The Bush telegraph never ceased to amaze him with its speed and accuracy.

The doc waved a hand. “All I meant was, good work on his part, applying consistent, firm pressure to the wound until Joe got there.”

“Yeah,” Liam said, “good work.”

“I haven’t met him yet,” the doc said a little wistfully. “Hear he’s a good guy.”

“Yeah,” Liam said, “a good guy.”

“I hear he bought a lodge on one of the Four Lakes.”

“Yeah,” Liam said, “on one of the lakes.”

“My sister would love an autographed picture,” the doc said. “For that matter, so would my mother.”

And so would the doc (not for nothing was Liam an experienced law enforcement officer). “Yeah,” Liam said, “I’ll pass that on. You got the round?”

The doc handed over the spent, squashed piece of metal in a small ziplock bag. Liam had the doc sign and date the bag, and then he extricated himself from the clutches of Gabe McGuire’s newest adoring fan and went to the waiting room.

As he approached the door, he heard a low voice muttering in furious tones. He slowed his steps. “What does it matter why she was there, or how late it was? Someone attacked her, Mom, someone shot her!”

“Liam said—”

“Liam said! Jesus, Mom, you can’t trust anything he says! He was sent here as punishment for screwing up on the job. They always transfer the deadbeats to Newenham, the worst teachers, the worst doctors, the worst cops, it’s always been that way—”

“That’s enough, Oren.” Tina’s voice sounded tired, as if she had been remonstrating with her son for a lot longer than the time they’d spent in the waiting room.

It wasn’t enough for Oren. “Okay, fine, Mom, I know you think the sun shines out of his ass. Think about this instead, then: How much is Evelyn’s little trip to the hospital going to cost us? Will we be able to pay for it after you sell off or give away everything Dad built?”

Oren’s question had the sound of something having been said before, many times.

Tina’s voice was sharper this time. “We’re not going to go hungry, Oren.”

“Right, Mom, and who was it who just rented the apartment over the garage because we couldn’t pay this month’s light bill because you refuse to touch any money in the Eagle Air bank account?”

Tina didn’t answer.

Oren lowered his voice to where Liam had to strain to hear it. “You have to drop this ridiculous idea of paying back everyone Dad ripped off, Mom. He screwed them, okay, no question there, but he’s dead, and we’re alive.”

This was followed by silence.

Over his shoulder Liam said in a voice meant to carry, “Yeah, Doc, I’ll let you know.” Louise Prewett, a heavyset nurse’s aide in her fifties, dressed in a flowered pink uniform, appeared at that unfortunate moment, looked from him to the empty corridor, and took a wide detour around him.

Liam couldn’t wait for that story to make the rounds. He walked into the waiting room. Tina and Oren were sitting in chairs across a low table, Oren slumped and sulking, Tina looking as tired as she sounded and about twenty years older than the last time Liam had seen her. First Irene, then Finn, now Evelyn. The way Tina looked, if she were going to survive, Evelyn had to.

“Tina,” he said. “Oren. Is there anything more I can do?”

“Sit with me for a bit, Liam, if you would,” Tina said.

Liam sat in a chair equidistant from both Tina and Oren. He wasn’t about to take sides, not even in body language. An interested observer, on the other hand, might pick up a clue or two as to what was going on between mother and son, and if it had anything to do with what had gone down at Eagle Air earlier this morning.

“Liam,” Tina said, “what you said before. How you think Evelyn got hurt.”

Oren’s snort of disgust was badly concealed. He stood up. “I’m going to get some coffee, if there is such a thing in this bad excuse for a real hospital.”

Tina closed her eyes briefly when Oren stamped out.

Liam waited. Without opening her eyes Tina said, “You said before that you thought it was an accident. That it looked like Evelyn and whoever it was struggled over the gun and that it just went off. That it was probably one of the partiers from last night’s blowout who drove out to Chinook and broke into the office.”

“Well,” Liam said, very carefully indeed, “as you know, Gabe McGuire heard shouting.” McGuire hadn’t, but absent the presence of Kate Shugak, this was their all new and improved story and they were sticking to it for now. “He heard what he thought was a struggle, followed by a shot, several shots. The weapon was one of Finn’s, hanging right there on the wall for anyone to grab. It certainly sounds like it might have been an accident.”

“But it was a man.”

“Yes.” One point upon which Liam felt he need not quibble.

She opened her eyes. “And you still have no idea who it might have been?”

Liam shook his head. “There has been too much traffic between here and the base to tell which vehicle might have been the one he was driving. He was driving away by the time Gabe got downstairs. And when Gabe saw Evelyn…”

“Yes.” She leaned forward to touch his arm. “When you see Gabe again, please tell him how very grateful I am for his actions. Dr. Stanford said he saved Evelyn’s life.”

There were tears in her eyes, and the ghosts of Irene and Finn were very much present in the room. “I will,” he said, although he wouldn’t, because Gabe might rip his head off and stuff it up his own ass if he did. And he wouldn’t be able to find it in himself to blame Gabe much, either. “Tina, now isn’t the time, I know, but when you get around to it, you might want to lock up all those guns Finn had on display in the office. At the very least, you should unload them.”

There was a flare of emotion in her eyes that he couldn’t quite read. “I’m going to throw the whole boiling lot of them into the Nushugak.”

There was a savage undertone to her voice that he’d never heard from Tina Grant before. “Some of them might be valuable,” he said, and felt that it was a weak response.

“I don’t care,” she said. “I wouldn’t touch a dime that was associated with those guns.”

Which didn’t exactly accord with the picture forming of Tina Grant hurting for money.

Liam went from the hospital to the post, where he wrote up an incident report that owed a great deal to years of experience and a fertile imagination, and prayed no one would ever know. He filed Gabe’s statement and added a note that it had been taken at the scene and in what circumstances. Gabe had displayed an unexpected talent for screenwriting, and it had taken some persuading to tone down the “rapid rasps” of Evelyn’s breathing and the “glutenous carmine” of her blood, not to mention the “acrid smell of spent powder” and “the immediate arrival on the scene of Newenham’s finest.” Although Liam did wonder just how much Gabe was trying it on, as a way of exacting a little revenge.

He got home just in time to kiss Wy good-bye on her way to work, when the phone rang. It was Tim, calling from Anchorage, to say hello and ask for money. Which was of course immediately promised to him.

“Sucker,” Liam said, holding her from behind, all the better to nuzzle her neck.

“I swear, it’s in the job description of kids in school, they have to call home for money once a week,” Wy said, hanging up.

“How is he?” Liam said, still nuzzling.

Wy sighed, tilting her head to give Liam better access. “Fine. I heard a girl’s voice in the background.”

“God help him.” With even more feeling he added, “God help us.”

“He doesn’t have a lot of luck in the sweetheart department, true.”

Liam picked her up and turned her around and sat her on the counter. He smiled down into her eyes, parting her legs so he could step between them. “Fortunately, I do.”

He loved the kid, he really did, but this kind of seduction was a lot easier with him three hundred miles away. He knew a secret, traitorous thought that Tim would have to repeat some subject so he’d have to stay longer, and then Wy slid her hands into his hair and he forgot Tim’s very existence.

“The door is unlocked,” she said when he pulled her T-shirt out of her jeans and and slid his hand up to the catch of her bra. Her breasts were warm silken weights in his palms.

“Liiiiiiaaaaaaaaaam,” she said when he bent his head to suckle nipples already hard through the fabric of her shirt.

“The curtains are open,” she said, her head falling back when his hands came around to cup her ass and snug his erection into the sweet spot between her legs.

“So we’ll make anybody watching reeeaally jealous,” he said in a thick voice.

“I have to get to work,” she said weakly, when he reached for the snap of her jeans.

“And you will,” he said. “Later.”