There wasn’t much room for more than two strides, so he turned a lot. Mutt and Kate watched him, heads swiveling like they were at a tennis match. “Virgil has also confessed to loving his wife. That’s it, that’s his sole reason for two murders and three attempts. He loved his wife and he didn’t want her to go to jail for murdering her babies. The thing is, they were his babies, too. And they wanted children, he told me so.”
“There is something called postpartum depression,” Kate said.
He waved an impatient hand. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve read the cases, there have been enough of them in the news lately, and I’ve responded to more than one SIDS death. I could understand Telma having postpartum depression, what I can’t understand is her having it five times with five babies and her husband standing by for burial detail every time without turning a hair.”
“You think he didn’t want them? You think he maybe killed them?”
He shook his head and came to rest in front of the window. Looking down at the parking lot, he said in a quieter tone, “No. I think she killed them and I think he buried them. You know, Kate, I have seen some shit in my time. Cops get their faces rubbed in the worst of human nature every goddamn day of our working lives, and I am sorry as hell to report that a lot of the time it has something to do with somebody loving somebody else. Hell of a testament to the power of love, don’t you think?” He turned to face her. “I asked him. Why, Virgil, I said. Why did you do it? I love my Telma, he says back to me. Jesus. He loved his wife, was all he could say. Well, the hell with that. Kate?”
“Jim?” she said, still wary.
“I’ve been chasing you.”
“I’ve noticed,” she said cautiously.
“Lately, it hasn’t seemed all that one-sided.”
“Lately, it hasn’t been,” she said.
“It’s over,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m getting off this ride,” he told her. He picked up his ball cap and yanked it down over his eyes. “If this is what love’s all about, I don’t want any part of it.” He paused. “I’m sorry if I led you on, made you imagine there was any more to it than a good time.”
She looked at him with eyes a little wider than normal but otherwise with no expression.
“I take full responsibility,” he said doggedly. “I don’t know, maybe I just wanted you because Jack had you and I couldn’t. And then Jack was gone and I could. I’ve always wanted you, hell, you have to know that. But you’re a serious woman, and you tend to be with one man at a time. That’s not me. I’m not that man.”
He looked at her, clearly bracing himself for an attack. She took a long, slow, careful breath, inhale, exhale, and felt a triumph so fierce well up inside her breast that it was hard to speak around it. She made the effort, and managed a mild, neutral, “If that’s how you feel.”
“That’s how I feel.” He would make it be how he felt if it was the last thing he ever did.
“Okay,” she said, praying he was out of the room before she burst out laughing.
“Love doth make fools of us all,” he added.
“Huh?” Kate said.
“Yip?” Mutt said.
“Don’t it,” he said, and the door swung shut behind him.
She waited until she heard his footsteps recede down the hall before lying back on the bed. She stared at the ceiling, and the laughter that welled up was so loud and lasted so long that the nurse came down from her station to see what was causing Kate’s heart rate to speed up on the monitor. When she saw the tears on Kate’s face, she rushed forward, all concern.
Kate waved her off. “I’m fine, believe me, I’ve never been better.” She beamed and scrubbed her cheeks. Her head still hurt but otherwise she felt fine, just fine. “All men are morons.”
The nurse’s face cleared, but she remained cautious. “That would be a given. Still. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ’em.”
Kate felt that it had been worth getting hit on the head with a shovel just to hear those words. “Where’s my pants?” she said.
“So I go out there, all concerned, thinking that Vanessa might have been raped by Dreyer,” Kate said, “and it turns out he was moving on up to blackmail.”
“Fucking insane,” Bobby said.
“Hagberg or Dreyer?”
“Over the fucking rainbow, both of them.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Kate said. She was at Bobby’s house, a pit stop between the plane ride from Ahtna to Niniltna and the long drive home. “It’s funny, too. Before I went out there I was thinking about Dreyer and all the opportunities he’d have for blackmail. He was in and out of our homes every day, not to mention the post office, the cafe, the Roadhouse. The opportunities for picking up information were endless. Hell, I don’t know why he didn’t hit Keith Gette up for a few bucks.”
Bobby smiled smugly. “And why would he think he could do that?”
“They’re growing dope in the Gettes’ old greenhouse, Bobby,” Kate said. “What, you didn’t know?”
The smug smile vanished. “They are not,” he said indignantly. “They’re growing herbs.”
“Herbs?” she said with heavy sarcasm. “Herbs? Is that what we’re calling marijuana these days?”
“No, it’s what we call parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,” he said with equal sarcasm. “They’re gonna dry ‘em and sell them on their website.”
“Website?”
“Yeah, the one Dinah’s helping them build, www-dot-praiseofcooks-dot-com. Or dot-org. Dot-something, anyway. That ‘praise of cooks’ thing comes from the Charlemagne quote,” he added parenthetically, “you know the one.”
“No,” Kate said, and wondered if perhaps she had left the hospital before she should have. “Can’t say as I do.”
“ ‘What is an herb?” Alcuin his tutor asked him,“ Bobby declaimed, with gestures. ”And Charlemagne answered, “The friend of physicians and the praise of cooks.” “
“Herbs,” Kate said. She was skeptical, not necessarily of the quotation but certainly of what Keith and Oscar were really growing up on the old Gette homestead. A cop’s instinct to expect the worst died hard. “And you know this how?”
“Bonnie down at the post office in Niniltna sent them to me when they asked her who knew how to set up a computer and a satellite dish.”
Kate digested this for a moment. “Have you actually seen this alleged parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme growing?”
“No, but they gave me some, and a couple of recipes.” Bobby assumed a virtuous expression. “Really, Kate, I don’t think you should go around assuming the worst of people. Just because – ” And then he had to duck when she threw a pillow at him.
“Besides,” he said, recovering his dignity, as well as rolling strategically out of range, “if Dreyer was going to blackmail them, he’d think of something much better.”
“Something better than growing marijuana?”
“Yeah,” Bobby said, and started laughing. “They’re gay, Kate.”
“Gay?”
“Gay,” Bobby said, nodding, a broad grin on his face. “Jesus Christ, how naive are you, Shugak? They’re a couple.”
“A couple?”
He lay back in his chair, helpless with laughter. Dinah was laughing, too. Even Katya was getting in on the act.
“Yeah, yeah, so my gaydar isn’t as good as some other people’s,” Kate said when the laughter finally died down to a couple of hiccups and the odd tear.
“Jesus, you don’t need gaydar when they’re practically necking right in front of you,” Bobby said. He rubbed the heel of his hand across his face. “Man, I haven’t laughed like that in I don’t know how long. Thanks, Kate.”
“Anytime,” Kate said dryly.
“Seen Jim lately?” Dinah said.
Kate’s face went opaque. “He came to the hospital to clear up some questions about the case.”
“Oh.” Something going on there, Dinah thought, and exchanged a look with her husband. Turning back she caught a very small, very odd smile on Kate’s face. She would have pursued it to its source, but Kate was talking again. “So Jeffrey went home.”