Willard hadn't been seen in a coat since the aunties had given him the quilt. Jim didn't know what the aunties were going to say when they saw the chocolate smeared down the front of it.
"Hey, Willard," Jim said.
Willard spun around as if he'd been shot. His face was red and liberally adorned with chocolate, tears, and snot. "Uh, hi, Jim." He sniffed and gulped and wiped his face on his sleeve, which didn't improve matters. "I didn't see you there. How are you? Anakin, say hi to Jim." He pulled the quilt down.
"Hey, Anakin," Jim said to the Star Wars action figure peeping out of Willard's shirt pocket. "Willard, you going to share that candy bar in your pocket with Anakin?"
Willard's eyes darted to left and right, and he ducked his head. "What candy bar? I ain't got no candy bar."
"Sure you do." He reached into Willard's pocket and pulled it out. Sure enough, one last Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Willard made a frantic and belated grab at stopping him, but came up only with a handful of air. He looked indescribably guilty.
"Willard, we've talked about this," Jim said. "You can't just take things from the store without paying for them."
Willard hung his head. "I know, Jim. I'm sorry, Jim."
"I know you know, and I know you're sorry." He held up the candy bar. "You got the money to buy this?"
Willard shook his head without looking up.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," a voice said behind Jim. "I'll buy him the damn candy bar."
Jim turned and beheld a vision.
Well, perhaps not quite a vision, but certainly one of the more attractive women he'd ever met. Blond, blue-eyed, a lean figure with enough curve to offset the muscle, a rosy complexion, a smile that was as charming as it was inviting.
He knew instantly who she was, of course. "Talia Macleod," he said involuntarily.
She looked delighted, her face framed by a white fur ruff on her parka hood, her breath making little clouds in the cold air of the parking lot. "How did you know?"
"I've heard."
"Of course," she said. "You would have. Chopper Jim."
"How did you know?" he said. She dimpled. "I've heard."
He laughed, and then caught Willard's arm as he tried to sidle away. "Excuse me," he said to Macleod, and walked Willard to his truck. He opened the door and helped him inside.
"Thanks, Jim," Willard said, sniffling. With a hungry glance fixed on the candy bar in Jim's hand, he said, "You going to eat that, Jim?"
"Willard," Jim said, holding the door open, "a store is where people buy things. They pay for them with money they bring with them." He spoke slowly and carefully. "I know we've never had a store in the Park before, but it works just like all the other stores you've ever been in."
Willard was following this carefully. "Like Costco?" he said, his brow knit in labored thought. "Just like Costco."
"Do I need a card before I take things out?"
Jim repressed a sigh. "No. Willard, unless you have money to buy stuff, stay away from Cindy's store, okay?"
"Okay, Jim," Willard said, happy enough to promise anything if it'd keep him out of jail this time.
Jim closed the door, and Willard started the engine and backed carefully out into the road and drove off.
Jim stood there, watching Willard's truck move down the road.
There wasn't a Park rat breathing who didn't think that Louis Deem had robbed Bernie Koslowski's home last spring, and that in his panicked rush to escape had shot and killed Bernie's wife, Enid, and Bernie's son, Fitz.
The celebration that followed Louis's own murder had quite drowned out Jim's subsequent inability to bring anyone to justice for it, investigate he never so thoroughly. Park rats were unanimous in feeling that Louis, a career criminal who had preyed on them for years with impunity, beating every charge brought against him including the murder of all three of his wives, with a record that was a veritable monument to his lawyer's genius in the courtroom, had finally got what had long been coming to him. Nobody cared who killed him, only that he was dead and in the ground and they never had to worry about him around their sisters, daughters, and wives ever again.
In the meantime, only Jim knew who was really guilty of the Koslowski murders, and he was watching him drive away. He couldn't prove it. Other than his own personal understanding of Louis's and Willard's respective characters and a photograph of the crime scene, he had no evidence. Willard himself, his brain destroyed in the womb, didn't remember it. No one else knew, only Jim.
For that matter, no one else cared. And no day passed without him thinking about it, worrying at it, the knowledge gnawing away at him until he felt like he was bleeding internally. Louis Deem's legacy. Sometimes he thought he could hear Louis laughing.
"Is he simple?" Macleod's voice said from next to him.
Recalled to the present, he said, "FAS. His mom was a drunk."
"I'm surprised he's allowed to drive a car."
"He manages to pass his driving test," Jim said. "Every time. And I have to say he's one of the better drivers in the Park. And certainly the best mechanic. But, yes, it surprises me, too."
She held out her free hand. "It's nice to meet you. I was meaning to drop by the trooper post and introduce myself." She grinned, and it was a great grin, with a wattage that could have powered a small city. "My company is going to be responsible for bringing a packet of trouble your way."
"I've heard," he said dryly, and she laughed, a husky, intimate sound. She had moved in kind of close, and she was tall enough that he could feel the exhale of her breath warm on his cheek. It smelled of cinnamon. "How about a cup of coffee at the Riverside Cafe? My treat."
"Why, Ms. Macleod," he said, drawling out the words. "Are you attempting to bribe me?"
"If coffee at the Riverside Cafe will get the job done, you bet," she said promptly. "Global Harvest would probably give me a bonus for getting it done so cheap."
This time he laughed. "Sure, I've got time for coffee."
She fluttered her eyelashes. "I might even have time for lunch."
Mac Devlin was at the Riverside Cafe when they walked in the door, sitting at the counter nursing a cup of coffee and a grudge. The way Jim could tell was that Mac was mouthing off against the proposed Suulutaq Mine, with an occasional slap at the proposed deepwater dock in Katalla. An equal opportunity trasher, that was Mac Devlin these days.
He had an attentive audience, which Jim found interesting. Mac was generally regarded as a blowhard, and as such not necessarily anyone to be taken seriously. Of course, it could be a case of hearing what you want to hear that kept most of them in their seats. They were mostly fishermen-including Eknaty Kvasnikof, who had recently inherited his father's drift permit for Alaganik Bay, Mary Bal-ashoff, who had a set net site there, and assorted Shugaks (including Martin, who gave Jim a wary glance)-and various other Park rats and ratettes.
There was a brief pause when he and Macleod came in. Mac gave Jim a belligerent look. "What, the cops in bed with the mine now?"
Macleod fluttered her eyelashes again. "Not yet," she said, drawling out the words. Everyone laughed.
Mac reddened to the point where it looked like the skin on his face might ignite.
Mac Devlin was a mining engineer, born in Butte, Montana, of another mining engineer who had booted him out of the house when he was eighteen years of age and told him to go find his own mine. He put himself through school digging copper out of the Kennecott Copper Mine in Utah, the world's largest open-pit mine. Upon graduation he'd gone to work for British Petroleum and had literally seen the world on their dime, or at least that portion of it that was a good prospect for oil. He transferred to Prudhoe Bay on the northern Alaska coast just in time for the discovery well to come in on the super-giant Sadlerochit oil field.