The Drussells were living in one of the zero-lot line homes that had gone up like weeds in Anchorage during the oil boom of the early ‘80s, most of them built on filled-in wetlands. This last made for either a damp basement or an unstable foundation or both, but by the time this was discovered the developers had long since decamped to Maui or Miami with their profits and their trophy blondes, leaving homeowners with a choice: bail or bail. Many more than Anchorage lenders were comfortable admitting to had simply turned in their keys and walked away. The rest invested in small pumps and garden hoses, and during especially rainy Augusts you could go into any one of these neighborhoods and count by tens the green plastic lines snaking from downstairs’ windows, emptying the water out of basements as fast as it seeped back in again. Ear, nose, and throat specialists reported a radical increase in upper respiratory complaints during such seasons, mostly from the mold and mildew that resulted.
It made Kate proud that the Park had no such tiling as a Planning and Zoning Commission. Not that she had anything left to plan or zone.
Gary Drussell answered the front door before the recollection had time to plunge her into remembered gloom.
It was Saturday, with weak sunlight filtering through a broken cloud cover. His hair had darkened and his skin lightened since the last time she’d seen him. Instead of overalls covered in fish scales, he was dressed in sweats, dark blue with white piping, clean and neat. “Hi, Kate,” he said, and stepped back. “Come on in.”
“Hi, Gary. This is Johnny Morgan. Mutt okay in your yard?”
Gary cast a wry look at the street. “I think the question is, is the neighborhood okay with Mutt on the loose?”
“Stay,” Kate told Mutt, who gave a disgruntled sigh and plunked her butt down on the wooden porch.
“Morgan, huh?” Gary said, leading the way through a cluttered living room. A girl lay sprawled on the couch in front of a blaring television, remote in hand. She looked up, and Kate felt Johnny pause. She didn’t blame him; the girl was lovely, with a rich fall of dark hair, dark blue eyes, and new breasts pushing out the front of her cherry red T-shirt in a way no adolescent boy could ignore.
Gary led them into the kitchen without introducing them. He nodded at Johnny. “Any relation to Jack?”
“His son.”
“Nice to meet you. I liked your father, few times I met him. Not a lot of bullshit going on there, for a cop.”
“Thanks,” Johnny said.
“Heard he was dead. Hell of a thing. Want some coffee?”
“Sure.” Kate settled herself at the kitchen table, covered with a faded print cloth and a small Christmas cactus, which was for some inexplicable reason best known to itself blooming in May. The refrigerator was covered with snapshots and honey-do lists. The counters were crowded with a toaster and canisters and a knife block and a little brown clay bowl with feet for legs holding three heads of garlic, one of which had begun to sprout.
A cat wandered in and did the shoulder-dive thing against Gary’s leg. He reached a hand down and gave its head an absentminded scratch. The resulting purr nearly drowned out the sound of the television.
“What’s this about, Kate?” Gary said, offering her a can of evaporated milk.
She took it and poured with a lavish hand. “It’s about Leon Duffy.” She looked around to offer the milk to Johnny, but he seemed to have vanished. She heard a murmur of voices from the living room.
“Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
“You knew him as Len Dreyer.”
“Oh. Of course. Len. Sure. Best hired hand I’ve ever had.” Gary cocked an eyebrow. “What about him?”
“You may not have heard. He’s dead.”
He raised both eyebrows this time. “Really?”
His surprise seemed minimal. “Yeah. Someone took out most of his chest with a shotgun.”
“That’s gotta smart.” Gary drank coffee. “A shame.”
Kate couldn’t help but note that Gary’s regret seemed even less than his surprise. “Why’s that?”
“Well.” Gary shrugged. “Like I said, he was first-class when it came to hired help. Never bid what he couldn’t deliver. Never said he could do what he couldn’t. Always showed up on time. Usually finished on schedule and on budget. Your basic home improvement dream team of one.” He looked at her, face guileless. “Why are you taking to me about him, by the way?”
It was Kate’s turn to shrug. “You’re a name on a list of people who had Dreyer do work for them in the days preceding his death. What’d he hire on for, anyway?”
If she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she wouldn’t have seen the infinitesimal relaxation of his guard. She did see it, noted it, drank coffee, and smiled an invitation for him to continue.
He did, relief making him a little more loquacious. “I was putting the house up for sale, and I wanted to spruce it up a little before I did. Get the best price out of it. You know.”
She nodded.
He became more expansive. “We remodeled the bathroom, ripped up that old linoleum and replaced it, stripped the kitchen cabinets and refinished them. That kind of stuff.”
“Sure,” Kate said, nodding some more. “Makes sense. What made you decide to move to Anchorage, anyway? I thought the Park had its hooks in you permanent.”
“So did I.” He watched coffee swirl around the inside of his cup for a moment before raising his eyes. “I been fishing the Sound since I could walk the deck of a boat. I inherited Dad’s permit when he died. I didn’t think I’d ever be doing anything else.” He sighed. “I swear, Kate, there’s more fish going up the river today than I’ve ever seen in thirty years of fishing, and at the same time the commercial catch is the lowest it’s ever been. What the hell is up with that?”
He already knew but Kate answered him anyway. “Used to be the commercial fishermen had it all their own way, Gary. Now you’ve got subsistence fishers and sport fishers wanting their share, too.”
“And then the market went to hell, what with the RPetCo oil spill and the farmed fish coming out of British Columbia and now Chile.” He was silent for a moment. “You hear they caught an Atlantic salmon out of Southeast?”
“No.”
“Fact.” He nodded once. “Absolute fact. Before you know it, the escapees from the B.C. fish farms are going to be interbreeding with wild Alaska salmon stock, and then what’ll happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you. We lose what market we do have because who the hell wants to eat that dry, diseased fish the farms produce? Fresh fish, my ass. I’ll tell you what else will happen, too-more guys like me, who used to fish for a living, will be forced to move into the goddamn city and find a goddamn indoor job where we have to wear a goddamn tie.”
They brooded together for a moment over the demise of commercial fishing in Alaska. The television was a steady drone from the living room.
Kate stirred. “Turns out Len Dreyer wasn’t his real name.”
He looked at her.
“His real name was Leon Duffy.” She sat up straight in her chair and took a deep breath. “Gary, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come straight out with it. Before he moved to the Park, Leon Duffy was arrested and jailed for molesting an eleven-year-old girl here in Anchorage.”
He stared at her without speaking. She couldn’t read his expression.
“He served five and a half years of an eight-year sentence. He got time off for good behavior. He disappeared off everyone’s radar screen after he was released.” She paused. “His next known whereabouts were the Park.”