Breakup (19 page)

Come to think of it, there hadn't been any scuff marks on the peeling walls, either, such as might be left by the toe of a frantically scrabbling shoe. She tried to remember the kind of shoes Carol Stewart had been wearing. Wafflestompers, weren't they? Leather and Gore-tex uppers, Vasques, that was the label on the tongue. Decent brand, readily available at REI, characteristic choice of the urban hiker. Herself, she stuck to Sorels. Except in the winter, when she got out the bunny boots.

She looked at Cindy. Cindy hadn't moved.

Of course Carol Stewart, instead of climbing out of reach, could have tried to run for it. People are dumb, and Kate had noticed that the degree of dumbness increased in direct proportion to proximity to the Bush. After all, the victim hadn't had any kind of a weapon with her, either.

Kate would much prefer the bear attack that resulted in Carol Stewart's death to be one of those random occurrences that wake up everyone to the fact that they aren't in Kansas anymore, because the alternative was a hell of a thing to contemplate. What was the line from the old song? You always hurt the one you love , or something like that. Kate wondered if that included feeding the one you love to a bear. Could anyone deliberately inflict that kind of damage, that kind of pain on someone they once loved enough to marry?

She thought of the five years she had spent in Anchorage investigating cases of abuse inflicted by parents upon their own children. Yes, she thought. Only too many could do exactly that.

At that point she realized with no little annoyance that she was beginning to think there might be something to Dan and Jim's suspicions, and was glad when Cindy stirred.

The other woman gazed around the room with a dazed look on her face. "Kate," she said, on a note of discovery, as if she had only just realized Kate was in the room, which in fact she probably had.

Kate kept her reply low and calm. "Hello, Cindy."

Cindy became aware of the rifle. "Oh." She leaned it against the wall. "Sorry. I didn't mean to wave this thing at you."

Kate smiled without moving. The rifle was still within quick reach. "I didn't think you did."

Cindy sighed and shoved a hand through her hair. "I've really fucked it up this time, haven't I?"

"Not necessarily, Cindy."

As if she hadn't heard, Cindy looked at Ben and said, "I've just had enough, you know? Enough. Enough of you drinking up every dime that comes into this house, so that we don't have enough money to buy food for our children."

Her voice was rising, and Kate said soothingly, "It's okay, Cindy."

Cindy's head snapped around. "It's not okay!" Her face contorted. "It's not okay, Kate. It used to be, but it's not now, and it's never going to be okay again. It was bad enough before, but since Becky-" Tears filled her eyes and overflowed onto her cheeks. She snuffled and rubbed a sleeve across her face. "I love my kids!"

"I know you do."

"I never pretended to be any kind of a saint, but there has always been food on the table in this house!"

"I know there has."

"Now there isn't even that much!" Her head snapped around and she stared at Ben, her face twisted. "Maybe if I keep you tied to that bed, you asshole, maybe then I'll get to the mail before you do and to the checks before you do and keep some of the money you've been blowing on beer and whores!"

Cindy stood with an abrupt movement. Startled, Kate followed her, and the blood rushed to her head. It took a dizzy moment to reacclimate, and when she did Cindy had the rifle clenched in her hands again, lips drawn back from her teeth. "You can't treat us like this, Ben! Your sister might be dead but that's no excuse to pretend we are, too!"

Becky Jorgensen, nee Bingley, had been Ben's sister, Kate remembered now. Ben and Becky had always been very close, and Becky had welcomed Cindy with open arms. All of Cindy's three children had adored her, too. Becky, one of Roger McAniff's victims two years before. Becky, she remembered now from the conversation at Bobby and Dinah's, who had died last August following two years spent at API trying to regain her sanity after the massacre. Thinking it over, Kate realized that Ben's present toot dated from the end of last year's fishing season, increasing in idiocy through the fall and reaching its nadir on New Year's Eve, so the story went, on which memorable night he'd been discovered in flagrante'delicto with Nadia Kvasnikoff on the sink in the men's room of Bemie's Roadhouse. Kate, conducting a New Year's Eve celebration of her own on the homestead, had not been present for the denouement, but had it on good authority that Bernie had chased the both of them out into the frozen Arctic night with the baseball bat from behind the bar, and had only tossed their pants and boots out as an afterthought.

Ben had never been what anyone would call a model husband or father, but at Becky's death, something had gotten off the chain.

She looked at him. He had his eyes shut tightly; even so, tears seeped from beneath his lashes.

"Cindy," she said, "give me the rifle." She stretched out a hand.

Cindy didn't move, and Kate remembered years before when Ben, fresh out of the Navy, had brought his new bride home to the Park. Cindy had been a lovely, slender, fair-haired, young woman, with melting brown eyes and an open, friendly smile, excited at moving to Alaska, eager to learn everything she could about Bush life. She was ten years older than Kate. This afternoon she looked twice that, the light filtering in through the drapes to darken the pouches beneath her eyes and deepen the lines at the corners of her mouth. She looked old, and tired, her eyes dulled, her prettiness faded, her youth gone.

There was no hope left in her, Kate thought, and something twisted in her gut. "Give me the rifle, Cindy."

Without looking at Kate, Cindy handed over the rifle.

Kate emptied out the magazine and worked the action until the chamber was empty before standing the gun in a corner. She pocketed the rounds and said, "Let's turn Ben loose." Her hands went to the wire securing his left ankle. From the corner of her eye she saw Cindy move as if in protest. Her hands went on steadily unknotting wire, while she wondered where the 9mm automatic was. After a moment Cindy began untying Ben's left wrist.

When he was free Ben ripped the bandanna from his mouth and said in a husky voice, "Give me my pants." He sounded sober and shaken.

Without a word, Cindy went to the closet and pulled down a pair of Levi's. He grabbed them without thanks and stepped into them, a stocky man with a middle-age spread threatening his waistband, dark, straight hair thinning on top, eyes bloodshot, chin unshaven. Ben was Kate's second or third cousin, she couldn't remember which, but she remembered a visit to her grandmother's house as a child, when Ben, home on leave, had made her an admiral's hat out of newspaper, complete with cockade, and taught her six-year-old self her first sea chantey, "Rolling Down to Old Maui." He'd had a fine, deep baritone that rattle d the rafters. Back then, there was always singing when Ben was around.

They weren't bad people, either of them, but they were going to wind up in jail and their kids split between foster homes if something wasn't done, and done soon. Kate waited until Ben got his zipper up before she said, "Guys, this can't go on."

They looked at her, faces numb to the point of exhaustion. She spoke slowly and deliberately, determined to get through to them. "You can do whatever you want to to each other, but you can't keep doing this to your kids. You know where they are right now? Annie Mike's. They ran there when you corralled Ben at gunpoint, Cindy."

Cindy stared at her.

"It's not the first time, either. Pretty soon they're going to decide they'd rather stay at Annie and Billy's than come home. And Annie and Billy have plumb run out of kids of their own to fuss over, so their house is probably feeling a little empty. Deidre's fourteen, Randy's twelve, what's Tom? Nine? Ten? Three kids, three kids just like yours, would just about fill up the cracks at the Mikes' house."

"They couldn't do that," Cindy said, her voice raw.

"Cindy," Kate said with as much force as she could muster, "how much more do you think it'll take to have the state declare you both unfit parents?"

Ben blinked at her. Cindy paled.

"How much Cindy?" Kate repeated. "One more time getting caught out on a sandbar in the middle of the river with your jeans down around your ankles in the company of a man not your husband? Ben? How much more? Another score in the Roadhouse John? Another Association dividend spent on booze instead of food or clothes?"

Ben flushed. Cindy said, weakly, "The state couldn't do that. These are tribal lands."

"We don't have sovereignty yet," Kate said, "and DFYS doesn't take kindly to neglect. You patch things up between th e two of you. I don't care how you do it, I don't care if you stay together or you split up, but you patch things up enough to provide some kind of stable home life for those kids, or, I guarantee you, they will find one for themselves."

She reached for the rifle. At the door, she turned to deliver a parting shot. "And I will help them."

She was almost to the front door when Cindy's voice stopped her. Kate turned to see her coming down the hall cradling a sliming knife, a filleting knife, a skinning knife and a well-worn Buck pocketknife. "Here," she said, thrusting them at Kate. "If you're taking the rifle, you might as well take these, too." She went into the kitchen and came out with a butcher knife and three mismatched steak knives. "These, too. Oh, and there's this."

She went to the coat hanger and fished around in the pockets of the worn pink plush jacket Kate had seen her in the day before, producing a Swiss Army Explorer knife flaking dried mud, complete with flat head and Phillips screwdrivers, saw, magnifying glass, scissors and, if they were lucky, maybe even a functional blade. "I tripped over this at the mine yesterday."

Kate accepted the hardware. "You chased Ben all the way up to the mine?"

Cindy nodded.

"I would like to have seen that," Kate admitted. "Where is it?"

"Where is what?"

"The nine-millimeter. The pistol you had yesterday."

"Oh," Cindy said. "Right. I forgot."

Kate saw the blank expression on her face and believed her. "Where is it?" she said, more gently this time.

"I tossed it."

Kate looked at her.

A bleak smile reached Cindy's eyes. "Really. I threw it in the Kanuyaq on the way back down from the mine. What do we need a nine-millimeter for? You can't bring down a moose with one unless he lets you walk right up to him and stick it up his left nostril." The smile faded. "It was just another one of Billy's toys."

The exhausted defeat in her voice pierced Kate to the heart. Juggling rifle and knives, she struggled to open the door and get out of that place of hopelessness and despair.

"Oh, here, let me," Cindy said, ever the polite hostess, and reached around Kate.

Kate paused on the doorstep. "Cindy-"

The bleak smile came back. "Don't worry, Kate. I'm all over my mad."

"Yeah." Kate wasn't convinced. "Next time, throw him out before you get mad enough to go for a weapon."

Cindy gestured. "Have to now. You've got them all."

The crowd parted before her like the Red Sea.

"What happened?"

"Yeah, Kate, what happened?"

"Did she shoot him?"

"Is he dead?"

"Of course he's not dead, you idiot, we didn't hear a shot."

"Maybe she knifed him."

"Kate, come on, talk to us!"

"Oh the hell with it, it's almost time for Alaska Weather on the TV. Let's go home."

"I hear it's blowing up a storm in the Gulf."

"No lie? Might mean some decent beachcombing for a change."

"Yeah, remember last breakup? Wish we could expect a Sea- land freighter to run aground every year. That was the best canned ham I've ever had."

The crowd had thinned, probably soon after Kate's arrival, since it signaled an end to the fun. Auntie Vi was among the missing, as were Dandy Mike and Karen Kompkoff and Old Sam. Billy Mike was still there, a very exasperated Mutt standing next to him. "Okay," Kate told her, and Mutt sprang forward as if shot from a bow, almost knocking her over.

"Okay, Mutt," Kate said, juggling hardware, "I'm all right. I said okay!" Mutt retired with a wounded look, and Kate dumped rifle and knives into Billy's hands.

"What the hell-"

"Cindy thinks it's best she not have anything in the house with targeting capabilities or sharp edges. I agree."

Billy accepted knives and rifle awkwardly.

She had her hand on the door of the truck when the second voice said, "Kate."

She swore to herself, counted to ten and turned. "Jim."

The trooper was standing in front of the postmaster's truck. He must have landed the helicopter at the village strip and borrowed the truck from Bonnie Jeppsen to make the trip up to the mine. The mine was so overgrown there weren't a lot of landing sites for a chopper, even for a pilot with Jim's skill.

Mark Stewart was sitting in the truck's passenger seat. The windshield was too dirty to see his expression.

Mutt, who all too often demonstrated no sense in men, gave a welcoming yip and swarmed all over the trooper. "Hey, girl," he said, white teeth flashing, long fingers finding exactly the right spot between her ears and scratching hard. Mutt's legs nearly gave out under the ecstasy. Over her head Jim said, "Got a call there was a problem at the Bingleys. Thought I'd better check it out, since I was in the neighborhood. Want to fill me in?"

Billy Mike shifted his portable armory and cleared his throat.

The Swiss Army knife slipped from his grasp and fell with a splat into a puddle of melting snow.

Kate stooped to pick it up. "Ben's been on what amounts to a seven-month drunk. Cindy took exception."

"What with?"

"Yesterday it was a nine-millimeter automatic. Today it was a thirty-thirty." She jerked her chin at the rifle slipping from Billy's arms. "I, ah, I straightened things out. For now."

She paused, aware without looking at him of the unspoken plea in Billy's eyes. It wasn't as hard as she'd thought it would be to get the words out. "Jim, as a favor? Leave it alone."