The “Please” unnerved her, knocked her off balance. She opened the door and peered inside.
Pete was at the mike, talking about the time Dina lobbied the Juneau legislature to pass the permanent-fund dividend. “The woman never bought a drink,” he was saying; “she thought that’s what legislators were for.”
But the potlatch was winding down. Christie was sitting on the edge of the stage, holding court. Kate didn’t see Dan. A line had already formed in the cafeteria kitchen to wash the dishes, people were shrugging into coats, stamping into boots, and rounding up children, and the drummers had packed up. She could make sure Johnny didn’t go home without escort, ask Auntie Vi to oversee the cleanup. Avoid Ethan.
“I’ll get my coat,” she said.
8
It was snowing still, but visibility was good and the flight was quick. That was fine with Kate. It wasn’t that she was nervous at rubbing elbows with him for a hundred miles, she assured herself, it was the close quarters with a man who, when you came right down to it, she barely knew. Whom she barely knew enough to bean with a lockbox. Whom she didn’t know anywhere well enough to sleep with.
I am losing my mind, she thought.
Halfway to Tok, he broke the increasingly heavy silence. “I don’t suppose this could qualify as our first date?”
Kate didn’t reply, and she was out of the Cessna the moment it rolled to a halt on the Tok airstrip. She helped him push it into its parking space, keeping on the opposite side of the fuselage he was on. The journey to the post was accomplished in silence.
Higgins was curled up on the bed of the cell. He looked cleaner and certainly smelled better than he had the last time Jim had seen him. It was always amazing, the difference a shower and a couple of meals made in a suspect. Jim remembered a conversation he’d had with a woman he had dated a while back who had taught remedial English to guests of the state going for their GEDs. “I read about the horrible things they do in the papers, and then I meet them and they seem so nice, so polite,” she’d told him. “They don’t seem like monsters. Why are they so different once they’re in prison?”
“For one thing, they’re sober,” he’d told her.
But Higgins hadn’t been drunk, or high, the day he’d killed Dina, the day he’d put Ruthe in the hospital. His tox screen had come back clean as a whistle.
Higgins rolled over to look at them when Jim called his name, then rolled right back again. “Come on, Riley,” Jim said. “Sit up, would you? I’ve got someone here I’d like you to meet.”
“Does he have an attorney?” Kate said in a low voice.
“Hasn’t asked for one.”
She raised an eyebrow. They both knew from bitter experience that a perp without an attorney was a confession just waiting to be kicked. Defense attorneys were as much witness to due process as they were advocate for the accused.
“I know,” Jim said, “but I can’t force one on him.” He raised his voice. “Riley?”
Kate silenced him with an upraised hand. She pointed to the door. Jim frowned and shook his head. She kept pointing. He sighed, handed her the key, and stepped into the hall. He left Mutt behind, though.
“Mr. Higgins.” Kate kept her voice low and calm. “May I please come in?”
The novelty of being asked permission to enter his jail cell did not fail to have an effect. Higgins rolled to a sitting position and looked at her with anxious eyes. “Do I know you?”
“No, sir, we haven’t met. My name is Kate Shugak.” She let her hand rest on Mutt’s head. “This is Mutt.”
He met Mutt’s yellow stare and smiled. “What a beautiful dog.” He reached a hand through the bars. Kate tensed and almost warned him, and then his hand was scratching Mutt between the ears and the big gray half wolf was leaning into it.
There was a dead silence. Kate pulled herself together enough to say, “May I come in, Mr. Higgins?”
“The door’s locked,” he said apologetically, as if she wouldn’t know that, and as if he were committing some dreadful social solecism by confessing to it.
“I have a key. May I?”
“Oh. Certainly.” He rose to his feet as she entered, Mutt padding at her side. There was a chair opposite the bunk, next to the sink. The jail kept its cells clean, but there were some smells you can never scrub away, and human vomit, urine, and excrement were three of the most pervasive. Kate sat down in the chair. Higgins waited until she was seated before sitting on the bunk. He had awfully good manners for a murderer.
His dark hair was thinning and cut to above his ears, his face gaunt, lined, and freshly shaven. His hands, clasped in front of him, were large-knuckled and scarred. He was so thin, his body was little more than a layer of skin over bone. He was probably fifty, fifty-five. He looked a hundred.
“You’re from Illinois, I understand, Mr. Higgins.”
He looked startled. “Yes, I am. Carbondale.”
“All your life?”
“Yes. Well, except for when I was in the army.” He ducked his head. “You know what the worst thing about jail is?”
“What?”
“No windows. In the movies, there are always windows, with bars on, that you can see out of.”
“With John Wayne on the other side.”
He smiled, delighted that she would play. “Right.”
“That was always in Texas. Be cold here.”
He frowned. “Oh, I guess. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“It’s a long way from Illinois to Alaska.”
“Yes. I mean, I guess so.”
“A long drive for someone traveling alone.”
He looked away. “I walked.”
The AlCan was fifteen hundred miles long, plus however many miles it was from Milepost Zero to Carbondale, Illinois. “Hitchhiked, do you mean?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” he said too quickly.
She nodded. By now, it would be next to impossible to find anyone who had given him a ride, even if his story were true, which it wasn’t. “That’s quite a trip. You must have seen some country.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, his face lighting. “Beautiful. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never been anywhere before, just home, and-well, just home, really. This was like-this was-” He shrugged and spread his hands. “Amazing.”
“Yeah,” she said, “I’ve heard.”
“You’ve never driven it yourself?”
She shook her head. “The two times I’ve been Outside, I flew.”
“You ought to drive it,” he said earnestly. “At least once.”
“I’ve been told that,” she said, nodding. She let the amiable silence lie between them for a moment or two. “So the Park was the first left turn after you crossed the border,” she said, smiling at him. Kate’s smile, while not as lethal as Jim Chopin’s, seldom failed to have an effect, either.
He smiled back. “Well, maybe not the first turn. But one of them.”
“It’s a hard place to pass up. I know. I’ve lived here most of my life.”
“I wondered.” He gave her a curious look. “If you don’t mind my asking, are you an Indian?”
“I don’t mind,” Kate said, “and no, I’m an Alaska Native. Aleut, mostly, but if you go back a generation or two, it’s quite a mix. Pretty much everyone who dropped by Alaska dipped their pen in my ancestors’ inkwell, from the Russians on down. Heinz fifty-seven American.”
Mutt lay down, and again Higgins scratched her head and retained his hand, and again Mutt leaned into it, as opposed to moving out of the way or even just tolerating it.
“Just about the most beautiful dog I’ve ever seen,” Higgins said quietly.
“She’s half wolf,” Kate said.
His eyes widened. “Really?” He looked back at Mutt. “Wow. She seems pretty civilized. I always thought wolf hybrids were dangerous around people.”
“Mutt’s the exception. And she’s got a pretty big backyard to run off any aggression she might be feeling.” Although the aggression was always there, and on tap when it was needed.