“Where did you get her?”
“She was a gift.” Kate nudged the conversation back on track. “Must have been tough, your first winter in the Park.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “I met Dina and Ruthe at the Roadhouse, and they were looking for someone to do odd jobs around their place for the winter. Cut wood, like that.”
Kate nodded. “Yeah, they’re always looking for someone. Not many can stick out an Interior winter, when they’ve just gotten here.”
“Yeah, your fall doesn’t last long,” he said, nodding. “I got here and, bam! it snowed. It was early compared to home. I was surprised.”
The first snowfall had been on October 17. “And then it kept snowing.”
“For six days,” he said ruefully, “and Dina and Ruthe had a heck of a lot of path to shovel.”
“Nice little cabins, up the hill.”
“Yeah,” he said nostalgically. “And an incredible view. Dina said that on a clear day you can see all the way to Prince William Sound. But I think she was fooling me.”
“That why you killed her?” Kate said, asking her first question of the interview.
His head snapped up and he stared at her out of wounded eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice strained.
“You mean you didn’t kill her? You didn’t try to kill Ruthe?”
“I don’t know. The way he found me, I must have-” He closed his eyes and what little flesh was left seemed to melt away from his face. “I don’t remember doing it, but I must have,” he whispered.
“Ever do anything like this before?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes-”
“Sometimes what?”
“Sometimes I lose time.”
“You lose time?”
“I just blank out. One minute I’m walking down the street, and the sun’s out, and the kids are playing in the school yard, and the next minute I’m in the shelter, lying on a bed, wrapped up in a blanket.”
“You had the knife in your hand when you were found. Did you blank that out, too?”
“I don’t remember any knife,” he said helplessly. “I don’t remember anything after-” He stopped.
“After what?”
He didn’t answer.
“If you didn’t kill Dina, who did?”
“I don’t know!”
“Pretty convenient, your not knowing.”
“7 don’t know! Oh god! Oh god!” He moaned and put his hands over his ears. “Can you hear it? Can you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“They’re coming!”
“Who’s coming?”
“Incoming!” he screamed, and took her down in a diving tackle. Mutt was on her feet in an instant, barking wildly.
Jim was through the door a heartbeat later, to find Higgins trying to drag Kate beneath his bunk, screaming “Incoming*. Incoming!” at the top of his voice. Kate was trying to fight him off, and Mutt had her teeth fastened on the back of Kate’s sweatshirt and was pulling with her legs braced, growling all the time.
She let go as soon as she saw Jim and started barking. The cement walls of the cells rang like a tocsin. Jim got one arm around Kate’s waist and hauled her up. For a moment, Higgins wouldn’t let go, and then he did and scuttled beneath his bunk. Jim deposited Kate unceremoniously in the hallway, said, “Out!” to Mutt, and went back into the cell. Higgins was curled into a ball, his knees to his chest and his arms over his head, moaning and crying and sobbing. “Oh God, I’m so scared, I’m so scared. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop!”
“Riley,” Jim said. Higgins kept rocking and moaning. “Riley. Riley! It’s all over. The attack’s over, Riley. It’s safe to come out now.”
Higgins’s sobbing slowly ceased.
“Come on, Riley.” Jim held out a hand. He could hear Higgins snorting back mucus.
“I’m going to stay here for a while. If that’s okay?”
“Sure,” Jim said. “Sure it is.” He pulled the blanket and the pillow off the bunk and gave them to Riley, who thanked him and proceeded to blow his nose on the blanket.
Jim stood up and left the cell, locking it behind him. He motioned to Kate, and the three of them padded silently down the hall, leaving the man beneath the bunk to crouch, shivering and terrified, waiting for the next attack.
“Poor bastard,” Kate said.
“Yeah,” Jim said. “But did he do it?”
“Poor fucker,” Bobby said.
He was sitting in front of the computer, one of the many electronic components of the console that occupied the center of the A-frame. He had a satellite uplink now and was the only person in the Park, apart from Dan and the school, to have instant Internet access. He tapped some keys and a different site popped up-one with a Department of Defense logo-one Jim was not entirely certain Bobby should have been able to get on, but he held his peace.
“He was at Hue. Private Riley Higgins, Seventh Cav.” He shook his head, exited, and sat back. “No wonder the poor fucker’s crazy.”
“I would remind you that this particular poor fucker killed Dina Willner, and may have killed Ruthe Bauman while he was at it,” Kate said tartly.
“Poor pucker,” Katya said sadly, trying to twist a Rubik’s Cube on the floor at Bobby’s feet.
“Listen to the girl, wouldja, she’s talking good as her daddy!” Bobby roared, snatching up his daughter and cradling her in his arms. Katya blinked up at him, surprised, and then gave him a blinding smile and a smacking kiss.
Dinah sighed and looked at Jim and Kate. “Soup’s on.”
It wasn’t soup; it was a big moose roast with the bone in, served with potatoes and carrots in a thick brown garlicky gravy and big hunks of fresh-baked brown bread. They dug in with a will.
After dinner, when Katya was tucked safely into bed and had fallen obligingly into a deep sleep-“Not to be heard from again until three A.M.,” said her loving mother-the four of them gathered around the fireplace. Jim and Bobby drank coffee laced with Bobby’s favorite Kentucky whiskey, and Dinah sat Kate down on a chair from the kitchen table, tucked a dishcloth around her neck, and proceeded to trim her hair.
“Is that normal behavior for posttraumatic stress syndrome, Bobby?” Kate asked him. “One minute, Riley Higgins was fine, conversing with me in a normal tone of voice. The next minute, he was screaming at the top of his lungs and hiding under the bed.”
Bobby snorted. “There is no normal.” He contemplated his mug and sighed. “You know one of the reasons I wound up in Alaska?”
“What?” Dinah bent Kate’s head forward and to one side to trim the hair on the back of her neck. Snip, snip. Black hair whispered down to the cloth. Jim was mesmerized.
“Because,” Bobby said, “Alaska was home to one of two-count ‘em, only two-U.S. senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Ernest Gruening, bless his bald head, whatever cloud he’s sitting on, I hope he’s got a babe on each arm and a gallon of sipping whiskey sitting in front of him that never goes dry.” He raised his mug in a toast.
“I went over in ‘68, same year as Higgins. Jesus, what a year. Started off with Tet-welcome to Vietnam, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out-Martin dead, Bobby dead, Chicago, the sit-ins, the riots, the demonstrations, Johnson quitting so he wouldn’t have to lose a war, Nixon in-Jesus squared-man, everybody was just so pissed off at everybody else. There was no peace to be found anywhere in this country. And then-’one, two, three, what are we fightin‘ for’-off I go to the Vietnam War. Only, wait, it wasn’t a war, because Congress never said it was, it was only a police action. And it sure as hell wasn’t like the goddamn government had made any effort to convince me that I was fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.”
He wheeled over to the stove and brought back the coffeepot, pouring warm-ups all around. Jim, still engrossed in Kate’s haircut, had to be nudged to get his attention. Miraculously, Bobby did not call it to everyone’s attention at the top of his voice, for which Jim was profoundly thankful. “You know the difference between a war and a police action in the middle of the jungle, with the enemy planting mines and pongee sticks for you to walk on and your own zoomies hitting you with Agent Orange and napalm from overhead? I’ll tell you. Nothing.” He topped off his cup with the bottle of golden brown liquor that took pride of place on the end table next to the couch.