She noticed for the first time that Ruthe and Dina had no family photographs, no pictures of mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers or sisters. She shrugged. Maybe they were both orphans. Still, it seemed odd. Everybody had pictures of people, at least a few. Ruthe and Dina’s albums were of plants, animals, glaciers, avalanches, and mountain-tops, and if there were people in them, they were usually Ruthe or Dina.
Then she found one with both of them and Ekaterina, posing in front of the Kanuyaq Copper Mine, along with a crowd of other people. The beaver-hatted man on Emaa’s right must be Mudhole Smith, the Bush pilot from Cordova. All four aunties were there, three with their husbands, who were still living at the time. Demetri Totemoff and John Letourneau were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, which would put the date back in the days before they’d split their guiding business and gone their separate ways. John was standing next to Dina and laughing down at her. Anastasia was next to Demetri, looking up at him with a soft smile. Demetri’s arm was draped tentatively around her, as if he had yet to be convinced that he had the right. He probably still feared the appearance of Anastasia’s father with a gun, which, from everything Kate had heard, would have been just like Frank Korsakovakof. A protective father and a good man. Anastasia had found it hard to go up against him, so the story went, but Demetri had prevailed, and in the end, Frank had come around. And now both Frank and Anastasia were gone. She made a mental note to stop in and see Demetri soon.
In the photograph, the polyester clothes and the hair, either board-straight or permed to a curlicue, put the time in the mid- to late seventies. They all looked tanned and fit, and so very vigorous. So alive. There was a man standing to the right and a little behind Ekaterina. Kate took a closer look. Ray Chevak, from Bering. Emaa’s-what? Even back then, he wasn’t young enough to be called “boyfriend.”
It was unnerving to see how far back Ray and Ekaterina’s relationship went. Kate hadn’t known about it until after Emaa’s death, and she didn’t want to know more, didn’t want her imagination to work out any of the details.
She heard a noise on the porch and went to the door. Mutt was on the top step, Gal between her front paws, her face screwed up into an expression of deep distaste as Mutt washed her with a raspy pink tongue. They both became aware of Kate at the same moment. Gal sprang away and hissed. Grr, Mutt said in return. Gal jerked her tail and padded between Kate’s legs. She gave an imperious meow, but when Kate got her some food, she barely waved a whisker over it before going right to Ruthe’s chair and curling up.
“Welcome home,” Kate said. She was immensely relieved. She didn’t want to have to tell Ruthe that Gal had disappeared. She bent to give the cat a scratch behind the ears and found her fur damp to the touch from Mutt’s ministrations. She looked over at Mutt. “You make a pretty good nurse.”
Mutt gave an elaborate yawn, and cleaned up Gal’s food with a single swipe of her tongue. It was all show, because Kate knew for a fact that Mutt had dined very nicely the day before on the remains of a moose carcass not a mile from the homestead.
She noticed a book she had missed beneath the sofa and bent down to pick it up. Wedged under the couch was a narrow tin box, of the size to hold standard file folders. It was locked. Kate looked for a key in hopes that there might be names and numbers for her to call-not that either Dina or Ruthe had ever referred to having anyone to call in the event of, other than each other. There was a key rack with hooks sprouting from little tin chickadees, with airplane keys, snow machine keys, and truck keys, but no keys to fit the tin box. She set the box to one side, not feeling things were to the point that she had to break into it.
“Hey,” a voice said from the deck.
She looked up, to behold Jim Chopin peering at her through the window. She didn’t notice that the sight of him didn’t cause its usual knee-jerk antipathy. “Hey, yourself.”
He came in. “What are you doing here?”
She waved a hand. “Trying to clean up for when Ruthe gets home.”
He looked at her and forbore from saying what was on both their minds.
“You?” she said.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I wanted to see if I’d remembered to lock the door.”
“There’s no lock.”
He examined the doorknob. “I’ll be damned.”
“Dina didn’t believe in locks in the Bush. Said if she and Ruthe were both away from home and somebody got lost in a blizzard that she wanted them to be able to get in.”
“I don’t know who’d stagger up this mountain in a blizzard, but it’s a nice thought.”
“I caught a couple of guys poking through the rubble.”
His eyes sharpened. “Who?”
She shook her head. “Don’t know them. I ran them off.”
“Get tags?”
She shook her head again. “I don’t think they’ll be back. And I’ll get Bernie to spread the word that I’m looking after the place.”
Which all by itself would be enough to keep the cabin and the surrounding property sacrosanct, Jim thought. At least for a while, at least until they knew if Ruthe would live.
“I hear you got the guy,” she said.
“Yeah. Knife in hand. Blood wasn’t even dry on it. Tests already confirmed Ruthe’s and Dina’s blood on it.”
“That was quick.”
“The governor himself called the crime lab. Love them or hate them, Ruthe and Dina helped make a lot of the history of this state. He ordered the flags to fly at half-staff today.”
In spite of herself, Kate was impressed. “A nice gesture.”
“Yeah, ought to pick him up a few more votes in the next election.” Gal’s head poked up over the back of the chair, and Jim said, “Hey, Gal, you came back! Good girl. Thank god. I couldn’t find her after she took off.”
He told Kate what had happened, and she laughed, surprising both of them. He picked up Gal and sat down with her in his lap, where she immediately curled up, purring and kneading. Mutt padded over and rested her chin on the arm of the chair, and Jim freed a hand to scratch her ears.
Kate sat down and started going through the paperwork again. When next she looked up, Jim had his head against the back of the chair and his eyes closed. Gal was curled into a soft black ball on his lap and Mutt was stretched out on the floor with her head on one of his feet.
It was quite a domestic scene. Kate went back to the paperwork, but her mind was more on the man across from her.
They called him “Chopper Jim” because of his preferred method of transportation, a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter, although he flew fixed-wing, too, and was reliable and skilled on both craft.
They also called him “the Father of the Park,” for his equally reliable and skilled seduction of pretty much every available female inside Park boundaries. Although now that Kate thought of it, she couldn’t remember any children whose mothers claimed he had fathered them. A courtesy title, perhaps, and Kate was a little startled when the thought made her smile.
He was originally from California, which figured. He had the same coloring as Ethan, only darker, and he was tall, also like Ethan, but he was much broader in the beam. He looked like a buff Beach Boy, and she’d bet he had spent his entire childhood in the water with a surfboard. What was he doing in Alaska, three thousand miles and one time zone away, with no sand, no surf, and no beach bunnies? It was a question she’d never asked him.