“You mind if I ask you a question now?” Harley said.
“Shoot.”
“What are you doing out here in the armpit of Alaska?” Glancing at Nika, he added, “No offense, Your Honor.”
“None taken. And you can knock off the ‘Your Honor’ stuff.”
He liked that it had gotten to her.
Slater bobbed his head, wiped up some ketchup with the last of his fries, and said, “Just some preparedness drills with the Coast Guard. Better safe than sorry.”
But his eyes didn’t meet Harley’s, and now Harley knew that something pretty big must be up, after all. Charlie’s suspicions were right; he might be an asshole, but he was smart. Harley would give him that.
“By the way,” Slater said, “what ever happened to that coffin lid that you rode to shore like a surfboard? I saw a photo of it in the paper.”
“Why?”
“Just curious.”
“As a doctor?”
Slater’s expression gave away nothing — and everything.
“I was thinking about putting it up on eBay,” Harley taunted. “But if you want to make me a cash offer …”
“Actually,” Slater said, “I was thinking along rather different lines. I was thinking that it doesn’t belong to you, and it ought to go back where it came from.”
“Oh yeah? Where’s that?”
“To the graveyard, on St. Peter’s Island.”
Then Slater looked straight at Harley, no bullshit anymore, and Harley could see he was dealing with more than some doc on a training run. So it was high time that the doc knew who he was dealing with, too.
“Law of the sea,” Harley said. “I found it, it’s salvage, and it’s mine. And no one better fuck with me.” He stood up, pushing off from the chair. “See you around,” he said, before glancing at Nika and adding, “Your Honor.”
“I do not think I would trust that man,” Kozak said, as Harley stalked off. Finishing off his mug of beer, he plunked the glass down on the table and burped softly.
“I think you would be right not to,” Nika said. “Harley and his brother Charlie are both bad news.”
Kozak excused himself to head for the men’s room, and Slater asked her for the full rundown.
“We’d be here all night,” Nika said, “just going through the police blotter.” But she gave him the capsule description of the Vane family and its long history in the town of Port Orlov. He seemed particularly intrigued when she mentioned that Charlie ran an evangelical mission over the Web.
“So that explains the lighted cross above that house in the woods,” he said. “I couldn’t help but notice it from the chopper.”
“X marks the spot.”
“And you think he’s for real?”
That was a tough one, and even Nika was of two minds. “I think he thinks so. But can a leopard really change its spots? Underneath, I’ve got to believe that Charlie Vane is still the same petty crook he’s always been. You can judge for yourself tomorrow.”
“How come?”
“He’s sure to be at the funeral service for the crew of the Neptune II. The whole town will turn out.”
“I’m not sure the professor and I should attend.”
Nika laughed. “You might as well. I mean, if you think your being here is some kind of secret, you’ve never been to a town like Port Orlov. Harley’s probably bragging already about how he told you to stuff it. If he’s lucky, it’ll be a good enough story to get Angie Dobbs back into bed with him.”
“Who’s Angie Dobbs?”
“The town’s most eligible bachelorette,” Nika replied. “The blond waitress over by the jukebox.”
Indeed, Harley was loudly regaling her, and a couple of others, with some tale or other. Slater wryly shook his head.
“It sounds like you’ve got your hands full running this town.”
Nika shrugged; she didn’t want him to think she felt that way. But it was the truth, nevertheless. Port Orlov, like so many Inuit villages in Alaska, was a wreck. With far too few social services and way too many problems, there were times when she felt marooned in the wilderness. Even if the town could just manage to get a decent, full-time medical clinic, it would be a huge step forward, but try finding the money for it, much less a doctor to staff it. For all of her noble intentions, Nika only had two hands and there were only so many hours in the day.
“We make do with what we’ve got,” she finally said.
“Sometimes,” he sympathized, “the satisfaction has to come from knowing you’ve done all that you can. No matter what the odds.”
She had the feeling that he was talking about his own work, too, and she wondered what terrible scenarios he might be revisiting in his mind. He had the look of a man who’d seen things no one should see, done things no one should ever have to have done. And despite their differences — not to mention that fact that they’d gotten off to a bumpy start at the hockey rink — she was starting to feel as if Slater might prove to be a kindred spirit.
In a backwater like this, they weren’t easy to come by.
Chapter 16
“Who do you trust?” Charlie asked, staring into the Skype lens attached to his computer.
“You mean which doctor?” the woman asked, confused. “I don’t know, they’re all so confusing, talking about carcinomas and—”
“Who do you trust?” Charlie broke in, his powerful hands gripping the wheels of his chair.
The woman on the screen visibly drew into herself, shoulders hunched, head down. Her straggly hair looked plastered to her skull.
“Who gives it to you straight?”
“You do?” she ventured, like a student hoping she’d found the right answer.
“Wrong!” he exploded.
She shrank further.
“I’m just the vessel, I’m just the messenger. Jesus gives it to you straight. ‘Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ Jesus is saying, put your faith in me — all your faith, not just a little bit, not just whatever you think you can spare — but the whole enchilada.”
“I do,” she pleaded, “I do believe in the whole thing, in God, but—”
“No ‘buts’ allowed! God says give it all, and I will return it all, one hundred fold. What’s holding you back?”
She paused. Children’s voices could be heard from another room. “I’m afraid,” she said in a furtive voice. “I’m so afraid.”
Charlie realized he was losing her; he was coming on too strong. This woman was still in the grip of worldly concerns, she was afraid of dying, and she was putting her faith in all the wrong places. He deliberately lowered his voice and adopted a more consoling tone. “I was once like you,” he said, “before God took away the use of my legs. I lived in fear, every day, fear of losing whatever I had — my health, my family, the love of my friends.” Even Charlie had to admit that the love of his friends was a bit of a stretch, but he was on a roll and could be forgiven. “And then, God gave me a good hard slap, he wrapped my canoe around a rock in the Heron River Gorge and stuck me in this wheelchair like he was planting a turnip in the ground.” In the time before the Forestry Service had gotten there to rescue him, Charlie had seen Jesus, as plain as he saw this woman on his computer screen now. He was wearing a long white robe, just like in the pictures, only his hair was long and black and the crown of thorns sparkled, kind of like it was made of tinsel. “And I have been growing ever since. My body has shriveled, but my spirit is as tall as a sequoia.” He had never seen Jesus again, but he knew that that day would come — either in this world, or the next.