Breakup (23 page)

She told him. When she came to the part where the bear stood up and snapped its teeth, Jim didn't go all manly-man on her and try to hide his shiver. "I hate that sound. Did you go for your rifle?"

Kate was silent.

"Kate?"

She raised her eyes, the expression in them rueful. "I didn't have it. Both the rifle and the shotgun were back in the cabin."

He closed his eyes and shook his head.

He hadn't said anything, but she agreed anyway. "Yeah, I know. Dumb. Especially for someone who is supposed to know what they're doing out here." She remembered the conversation at Bobby and Dinah's table the night before and one corner of her mouth curled in self-mockery.

He shook his head. "Close."

"Too damn close," she agreed.

"You gonna take the shotgun down to the creek when you go fishing from now on?"

Kate gave a short laugh. "From now on, Jim, the shotgun goes with me to the outhouse."

"Good." He paused. "So that's it, huh?"

"So that's what?"

"You got charged and survived. Carol Stewart got charged and didn't. Could have been you and wasn't. That's why you're finally asking questions. You want to find out what happened."

She shifted uncomfortably and didn't reply.

He looked over her shoulder, and she knew he was looking at Mark Stewart again. "I got charged once myself, hunting on Montague Island. Big male. Real big, and there was snow on the ground, which as you know makes 'em look twice as big as they already are. False charge, he stopped about fifty feet away from me and reared up like a goddam jack-in-the-box. He ran off after he let me know I was someplace I shouldn't be and he didn't like it and he was sure I knew he didn't like it. I've never forgotten it." He dropped his eyes to Kate's and added in an even tone, "I've never forgotten what happened afterward, either. It took twelve hours to come down off the adrenaline high, and I was still jumping at noises a week later."

Kate nodded. "It's not something you get over overnight."

They both looked around at Mark Stewart. Evidently Tina had ceded the field to Jackie, who had Stewart's hand pressed between hers, soothing away whatever strain might remain from grizzly- induced nervous trauma. The treatment appeared very effective. Tina was across the room, flirting obviously and outrageously with Frank Scully. One of the Moonin boys-Sergei, or was it Tom?- didn't like that any more than he'd liked her making up to Stewart. "Of course," Jim said thoughtfully, "if you were expecting a bear charge-"

"-like if somehow you managed to provoke one-"

There was a brief pause, broken by Jim. "He said he'd gotten her up on the roof before he ran for help, but he didn't have a mark on him, like the bear had taken a swipe at him, or like he'd gotten in between the bear and his wife."

Kate remembered the long strips of paint peeling back from the clapboard sides of the buildings. "I didn't see any trace of anybody climbing up any walls to a roof." , "Me either, and I looked pretty carefully this morning."

There was another, longer pause, broken again by Jim. "Well, if he did what I think he did, he took one hell of a chance."

"I wouldn't care to hand-feed a grizzly myself.'' She drained her glass and frowned. "You'll never prove it, you know. If there's no forensic evidence, all you can prove is that the two of them came into the Park and acted dumb, and unfortunately, dumb is not a capital crime." She drained her glass. "No, you'll never prove it."

"Aside from finding the rope he tied around her neck with the stake attached to it, that is." He saw her expression and gave an apologetic shrug. "Sorry, Kate. Remember, by the time I saw her, she was no longer a woman. She was just a hunk of leftover meat."

"Me, too," Kate said softly.

"Bears," he said. "They wake up cranky, the way everyone does when they wake up hungry. If they stumble over a patch of horsetail first, fine. If they stumble over a nicely decomposing body instead, that's fine, too. If they run into a couple of idiots setting themselves up as the main course, all the better. Hell, nobody ever got mad at Binky-God rest his ornery little soul-when somebody tried to crawl into his cage at the Alaska Zoo. If you're the kind of person who thinks crawling into cages with polar bears would be, like, totally rad, dude, you're doing the whole human race a favor when you do."

"And if the bears get an assist on the goal?"

"As you so astutely pointed out, Kate, we don't have any evidence." The quickly bitten off words indicated that he was not as resigned to the situation as he would have her think. "Hell, we don't even have motive." He brooded for a moment. "Thought I'd give jack a call, have him run a make on Stewart. Purely unofficially, of course."

"Oh, of course," Kate said courteously, and wondered what Jim's boss would have to say if he thought for one moment tha t Sergeant James M. Chopin, pride of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, was treating a random bear attack as a murder investigation.

Dan O'Brian had bellied up to the bar and was holding forth on the trails, trials and tribulations of a ranger's life for the edification of one Amy Kasheverof, a medium-size brunette with flashing dark eyes, a dimple in her right cheek and an impressive cleavage displayed to advantage in a tight scoop-neck T-shirt.

Kate caught sight of Ben Bingley, sitting alone in a corner, nursing his head and a beer. "Only one so far," Bernie said in answer to Kate's inquiring glance.

Old Sam Dementieff caught her eye and raised his Irish coffee in salute; she bowed slightly in return, feeling unsettled that he evidently regarded them as being somehow in cahoots.

Karen Kompkoff's husband had shown up in time to rescue her from a fate worse than death and Dandy Mike was now hustling Shirley Inglima around the pool tables (didn't the man ever let up?). The four Grosdidier brothers, who at one point had constituted four of the starting five of the Kanuyaq Kings, had joined Old Sam beneath the television monitor, dwarfing the old man, who more than made up in noise what he lacked in size. The Unitarians had moved on to "The Old Rugged Cross" and were making an even better job of it than they had of "Amazing Grace." The quilters were doing finish work. Kate wondered if Dinah knew the end product had her name on it.

All in all, kind of slow for a Saturday night, but then it was early.

"Not to change the subject," Jim said, "but Nathan Harrigan is your DB. Ring any bells?"

"I don't have any DBs," Kate said instantly, but something nagged at the edge of her consciousness. She puzzled at it for a moment and got no change. "You mean the body the go team found near to but not on my place yesterday?"

He nodded. "I talked to the coroner this morning. It's too soon for a positive identification, but the body matches a missing person description. Guy from Anchorage, electrician, contract hire fo r Northern Enterprises-now there's an imaginative name-anyway, he didn't come in for work one day last October. After three days' no show and no call-apparently Harrigan was the responsible type-the boss got worried and sent his secretary to check out Harrigan's apartment. Nobody home, nothing missing except maybe a few clothes, truck parked in the lot. Nobody's heard from him since."

"No family?"

He shook his head. "There was a girlfriend a while back, last summer sometime according to the apartment manager, but he couldn't remember much about her except that he thought she was blonde. Or maybe brunette. I love eyewitnesses. Almost as much as I love breakup. And of course he didn't know her name or anything about her. Nobody at work did, either."

"A man who kept himself to himself," Kate murmured, still trying to scratch the little itch at the back of her brain. "How'd he die?"

"Coroner says he's got a crack on the back of his skull, and his right femur is cracked about halfway down."

"So he fell down and broke his leg and hit his head while he was at it?"

"Something like that."

"Did you find a rifle or gear or anything at the scene?"

Jim shook his head again.

"Then what the hell was he doing out there?"

Jim smiled his carcharodonian smile, all teeth and appetite. "I was hoping you'd check around a little, take Mutt, see if the two of you can sniff out something."

She opened her mouth to tell him exactly and precisely what she thought of that idea when the window to the right of the door shattered, and the neon Rolling Rock sign with it.

"Shit!" Bernie said, and dropped for cover.

The second bullet shattered the mirror behind the bar.

Chopper Jim clapped his hat on his head and performed a neat, economical, 5.4 swan dive over the bar to land with a breathless thud on Bernie's other side. Bobby had his chair in overdrive with Dinah in his lap as he skidded around the other end. Dan was left sitting, open-mouthed, where he was, one arm around an equally befuddled Amy.

Kate tackled the gray streak as it launched itself from beneath her stool. "No, Mutt, no! Stay!" Mutt, growling and barking, was an inch away from fighting free when Kate got a headlock on her. "No! Calm down, girl, calm down. Dammit, stop that!"

She got to her knees and knotted a hand in Mutt's ruff. "Come on, sweetheart, there's a good girl. Come on, dammit!" With a mixture of curses and endearments she managed t o crawl around the bar, hauling Mutt behind her. They took cover next to Bernie.

The door banged open and a figure backed in. Kate, sneaking a look over the top of the bar, saw that the figure, which looked ominously familiar, held a rifle at waist level and was firing pointblank into the parking lot. For the moment the target had shifted, and she motioned to Jim and together they rose to grab Dan and Amy and haul them over the bar to safety, where they landed on Bernie, hard. Bernie complained.

All around the bar, tables and chairs overturned as everyone in Bernie's Roadhouse dove for cover for the second time in two days, with the exception of Ralph Estes, who remained head down on the bar, snoring peacefully. The six Unitarians charged off in six different directions, uttering loud cries to the Lord. Dandy Mike wound up on top of Shirley Inglima, which was what he'd been trying for anyway, and all four Grosdidier brothers were jammed into the same corner.

Mark Stewart and Jackie Webber were on the floor beneath their table. Harvey, Demetri and Billy Mike had sought refuge with Old Sam, whose gleeful expression was clearly visible from where Kate crouched. The quilting bee rose to its collective feet, folded and stowed their work and made for the back door in calm, orderly procession, bullets flying all around them. Kate, furious with fear, saw the door close safely behind Auntie Joy and suffered a wave of relief that had her sagging weakly against the bar.

"GodDAM!" Bobby roared. "We didn't use this much ammo at Hue!"

"Do something, Kate!" Bernie said, shoving her. Kate shoved Bernie. "It's your bar, you do something!" Bernie shoved Dan. "It's your Park, you do something!" Dan shoved Jim. "It's your state, you do something!" The trooper might have been able to hold out against everyone else, but Mutt barked an endorsement of their views right in his face. Until then he had regarded Mutt as his love slave, but sometimes love is not enough. He cursed, thrashed around until he go t his .357 out and very slowly and very carefully got his feet under him to hoist a wary eye over the top of the bar.

The next round took his hat off.

Chopper Jim sat back down again and said very calmly, "I think we'll wait a bit longer before we mount a frontal assault."

"What do you mean we, white man?" Bobby said.

Kate cursed them all with impartial fervor. "Bobby, hold Mutt." Mutt didn't like it, neither did Bobby, and Jim said sharply, "Kate!" but she was up on all fours and peering around the end of the bar before he could stop her.

The figure in the doorway was reloading and a positive hail of bullets smacked against the outside of the building. Kate recognized Cheryl Jeppsen feeding shells into the stock of a Winchester. She ducked back. "It's the Hatfields and the McCoys again."

"Gee, why am I not surprised?" Dinah said wearily.

Bernie swore loud and long. "Goddammit, why do they always have to come and shoot up my place? Why can't they stay home and shoot each other's places up! I hate breakup!"

"Give it up, Kay!" Cheryl shouted. "Go on home and I'll forget you started this!"

"I started it!" a furious voice yelled from outside. "Like hell! You started this, you bitch, I was driving down the road minding my own business, and you shot my husband!"

"It's not your road, and it's not your land!"

"Bullshit! We've got a right of way!"

A shot was her reply.

"Can't you throw them out of the Park or something?" Kate said to Dan.

"You tell me how, legally," Dan said grimly, "and I'll be more than happy to oblige."

Another flurry of shots and everybody ducked. "I don't know, get creative, take their land back or something!"

"What land?" Dan hissed back. "Their homesteads? It's not federal land anymore, it's state land, or it was until the Jeppsens and the Kreugers won it in the lottery, now it's private property.

Both families have already proved up, it's theirs, nothing the Parks Service can do about it now," Dan said, adding with heartfelt sincerity, "thank God."

"You think maybe you guys could discuss who owns Alaska some other time?" Bobby said politely, adding in a ferocious bellow that could probably be heard in Whitehorse, "LIKE AFTER SOMEBODY COLDCOCKS THOSE TWO CRAZY BITCHES OUT IN FRONT OF THIS FRIGGIN SALOON!"

Kate swore ripely-there'd been a lot of that going around lately-and raised her voice. "Cheryl? Cheryl, it's Kate Shugak."

"What do you want?" the woman with the rifle snarled without turning around.

"You think you could kind of take it easy? There are a lot of people in here who don't use your land to get to their homestead. No reason for them to get hurt."

"I don't have any intention of shooting anybody, except that red-haired, brass-plated bitch outside!"

Cheryl's Christian charity was slipping along with her language. As if to underline the thought, there was another loud Bang! and Kate flinched. So far, it had been the noisiest spring in the Park in her memory. "Cheryl," she tried again, "this is silly. Are you and Kay just going to keep shooting at each other until you run out of bullets?"