“He’s not my hunky trooper.”
“Really,” Dr. Giroux said. “My mistake.”
Kate thought back. “Dirt,” she said. “I could hardly breathe.”
“Yes,” the doctor said, “apparently-” but there was no apparently because Kate’s eyes closed and she slid gratefully back into sleep.
The second time she opened her eyes Auntie Vi was there, sewing something, her half-glasses slipping down her nose, looking impossibly dear. Kate watched, saying nothing, until Auntie Vi looked up and said, “Katya! You awake!”
“Hi, Auntie,” Kate said with what she knew must be a very weak smile.
Auntie Vi smiled back. “You want some water?”
Kate nodded, and sipped at the cup held to her lips, and slipped back into sleep.
The third time she woke up Mutt was there, sitting next to tüe bed, just tall enough to rest her nose on its edge. Big yellow eyes blinked at Kate, one eyebrow raised, and Kate heard the thumping of a tail against the floor. The area beneath her right ear had been shaved and there were stitches. She looked like Dr. Frankenstein had been using her for experimentation.
“Mutt,” Kate said. Tears blurred her eyes. “Mutt,” she said again, and reached out. A rending pain beneath her forehead blinded her. Her gasp caused a flurry of movement beyond her vision. She didn’t slide into sleep this time, she plummeted.
The fourth time she woke Mutt was still there. Johnny was sitting in Auntie Vi’s chair, bent over a book.
When Kate moved, a long rasping tongue came out and washed her face. She half-smiled and tried to clear her throat. “What are you reading?” she said.
Johnny looked up. “You’re awake!” he said.
“Everybody says that, and every time they do I fall back asleep. What are you reading?” He held it up, mute. “Have Space-suit, Will Travel. One of my favorites.” Wait a minute. Memory came back, painful and painfully. Someone had burned down her cabin, and all her books with it, and all Johnny’s, too. “Where did you get it?”
“We got a box of books from Rachel yesterday,” he said.
“Good old Rachel,” Kate said, closing her eyes and smiling. “Read to me.”
Johnny was doubtful. “You want me to start at the beginning?”
“Anywhere.”
Kip and Peewee were on their way to Tombaugh Station and Pluto when Kate drifted off this time.
The fifth time she woke she was alone, and hungry, and she had to pee. The catheter was out, thank god, and so was her IV. She sat up carefully, and discovered Mutt asleep on the floor next to the bed. The hair was starting to grow back through her stitches. “Don’t we make a pair,” Kate said.
Mutt’s ears twitched but she didn’t move. Kate stepped over her and negotiated the distance between bed and bathroom successfully. She made a fairly praiseworthy attempt at a spit bath, found a comb and wetted down her hair, carefully avoiding the lump that had somehow missed being shaved, and came out looking for her clothes.
“Get the hell back in that bed,” Jim said from the door.
She glared at him, swaying a little, the draft coming in through the open back of her hospital gown. It made her feel vulnerable. She hated feeling vulnerable, especially in front of Jim. “Where are my clothes?”
“If I knew I wouldn’t tell you. Get back in that bed now, or I’ll put you in it.”
He looked like he meant it. Grumbling, she obeyed, keeping her back turned away from him. “I’m hungry.”
“Yeah, like that’s a surprise,” he said, and deposited a Styrofoam container on her lap.
She opened it and found country-fried steak, no gravy, eggs scrambled soft, and home fries with onions and green peppers. She blinked. She might even have sniffled.
“Don’t you dare cry.”
She looked at him, misty-eyed.
“I mean it,” he said, sitting on the extreme edge of a chair.
“Where’s the coffee?”
He handed her an Americano tall, with cream.
She couldn’t help it; one lone tear escaped to run down her cheek. He looked away, glaring at a potted plant sitting on her nightstand. She swiped at the tear with her hand while he wasn’t looking. A small brown bag held a side of sausage gravy, plastic flatware, and salt and pepper. “Could you push the table over here?”
He pushed.
“Could you raise the bed, please?”
He raised.
“What day is it?”
“Friday. May sixteenth.”
“Thanks.” She waded in. Mutt woke up, noticed Jim Chopin was in the room, and padded over to welcome him with a lavish tongue. Her head wound must have slowed her down some, at least temporarily, because she was less effusive than usual. He could be grateful for that while abhorring the cause. He was silent, sipping his own coffee as he waited for Kate to eat. Nothing got in the way of Kate Shugak and a meal, not even a double homicide and two, three if you counted Mutt, attempted ones.
Mutt subsided, lying back down and resting her head on his right foot. He’d been tapping it nervously, so he took that as a hint.
Kate finished the last bite with a positively voluptuous sigh and leaned back, uncapping the coffee and sniffing it ecstatically. She sipped, and made a sound that sounded appropriate coming from a bed. Jim gritted his teeth.
“I’m going to live,” she said, smiling at him.
“Good,” he said briskly. “Now tell me what happened. You went out to the Hagbergs’ place. Why?”
Right to business. She searched her memory, and to her relief the fragments came together. “Because I got to looking at the list of people who’d had contact with Dreyer prior to his murder, and after what Gary Drussell said, I wondered if there were minor girl children in any of the other homes. And then of course I remembered Vanessa.”
“Of course.”
“So I went over there to talk to Virgil and Telma about Vanessa. I wanted to make sure she was all right, that Dreyer hadn’t gotten to her the way he had Tracy Drussell, and that if he had that we got her some help.”
“I see.” He sat still for a moment. “And Virgil thought you were there because you’d figured out that he had killed Dreyer.”
She looked up. “Virgil killed Len Dreyer?”
He nodded. “And Dandy Mike.”
She stared. “What?”
“He shot Dandy Mike,” Jim said stonily. “Dandy was just like you, he wouldn’t stay fired. He kept asking questions, and Virgil got to hear about it, and last Monday he followed Dandy up to Dreyer’s cabin and shot him with the same shotgun he used to kill Dreyer.”
Kate closed her eyes. “Dandy’s dead?”
“Yes,” Jim said, snapping the words out. “Dandy is most definitely dead. They’re releasing his body today, so you’ll be home in time for the podatch. Billy and Annie are planning one hell of a podatch.”
There was silence for a long time in the room. “I was so sure,” Kate said at last in a faraway voice, “I was so sure after we found out about Duffy serving time for a child abuse conviction that the killer would be some outraged parent. I was even prepared maybe to let it slide.”
“I wouldn’t have let you.”
“You wouldn’t have known,” she said. “Did you talk to George?”
“No. George? Why?”
She told him. “And then he came out to my place the next day and said that he’d lied to me, that Gary Drussell had flown into the Park last fall, looking for Len Dreyer, and that he’d had a shotgun with him. He told George he hadn’t found him, but we both figured he was lying. So I was sure Gary had done it, had killed Dreyer.”
“And it turns out,” Jim said after a moment, “that instead it was something that Dreyer/Duffy found during one of his jobs.” He told her the rest of the story.
“Five?” she said. “Five babies? All dead?”
He nodded. “And buried out back. Dreyer dug in the wrong place. You’ve got to wonder if he meant it to happen, letting Dreyer dig so close to where they were buried.”