She headed for Niniltna after dark with the uneasy feeling that Park rats who lived on the river were getting out the gun oil and the ammunition all the way back to the Lost Chance Creek Bridge.
She pulled up at the post at eight that evening, noting evidence of a great many tracks in the snow in front. Only Jim's snow machine remained. She turned off the engine and got off, a little weary. Mutt took this opportunity to stretch her legs and vanished in the direction of the airstrip. There was a colony of rabbits denned up in a clearing in back of George's hangar.
Kate went inside. Maggie had already left for the day. "Jim?"
"Yeah," he said, and she went into his office.
He was stretched out almost horizontally in his chair, his feet up on the desk and his head on the windowsill. He had his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest and he looked like he was about to be carried out of the office feetfirst to have prayers sung over him for the repose of his eternal soul. "Hey," Kate said.
He opened one eye, and closed it again. "Hey." She sat down. "How awful was it?"
His chest rose and fell. "Could have been worse. Larry King could have shown up." Kate winced. "Really?"
"Really." He opened the eye again. "Where you been?"
She told him. When she finished they sat there, silent, for a while. Eventually he uncrossed his feet and set them down on the floor, regaining the vertical with a mumble and a groan. His eyes looked red, as if he'd been rubbing them a lot. "You?" she said.
He gave his scalp a vigorous scrub with his fingertips and then tried to smooth down the resulting haystack. "I got the body off to the lab. I just talked to Brillo, and while he's going to do the usual, he says what we saw is pretty likely what we got."
"Was she the intended victim, though?" Kate said.
Jim raised one shoulder. "Maybe, maybe not. Everybody uses the creek after it freezes up to get back and forth to the school. If the killer really was aiming for Talia, he was taking a hell of a risk that he'd get somebody else."
"Mine related, you think?"
Again the shoulder. "Lot of people not loving the idea of that mine, Kate."
"I know," she said. "But to the point of murder?"
"Mac Devlin," he said. "At the trailer out at Suulutaq, from a distance that argues they might maybe have been shooting at anyone working for Global Harvest who happened to be there. And now Talia Macleod, Global Harvest's mouthpiece in the Park, lately to have been seen pretty near everywhere in it, promoting said mine."
"Same guy, then."
He nodded. "That's my thought. Too much propinquity not to be."
"I'm taking your Word of the Day calendar away."
He gave a tired smile. "How the river rats taking it?"
"In the immortal words of Brendan McCord, I left everyone mobilizing for Iwo Jima."
"Great," he said. "We need more bodies, 'cause it's not looking enough like the last scene in Hamlet already."
"They have a right to protect themselves, Jim," she said quietly.
"I know." After a brief pause, he said, "So. The Johansen brothers?"
She didn't say anything for a moment. "I don't know," she said finally.
He looked at her. "You figured them for the attacks."
"Since Louis Deem's dead, yeah," she said. "But…"
"What?" he said as she didn't continue. "I like that scenario. On any other day, so would you."
"Murder?" she said, and shook her head. "It's convenient, the mine as a motive, Park rats with a grudge, but I'm just not feeling it."
"I'm taking your DVDs of The Wire away," he said, and sat up. "That's not all, though, is it. What haven't you told me that I don't want to hear?"
Kate sighed. "I'm a little worried about the Johansens."
He raised an eyebrow. "That's a first. For pretty much anyone within a five-hundred-mile radius."
"You know I went down the river the day after you found out about the attacks. I talked to Ken and Janice, Ike, and the Rileys. On my way down, Ken and Ike were foaming at the mouth and threatening to shoot on sight."
"Who?"
"Anybody," Kate said. "I'm probably lucky they didn't take a shot at me."
"Were the Johansens mentioned?"
"Of course they were," Kate said. "They're nowhere near the caliber of natural disaster that Louis Deem was, but you don't live on the river for a year without learning who you don't want to be your new best friends. So I kept on keeping on, down to Red Run to talk to the Rileys. And here's the thing, Jim. They aren't foaming at the mouth. They aren't even mildly disturbed. They're not worried about catching the guys who attacked them, they have perfect confidence that Trooper Jim will get the job done, and they're willing to put their faith in him."
"I appreciate the confidence."
"Yeah, well, don't pin that medal on yourself just yet. I go back up the river and drop in again on Ike and Ken, and guess what? They're all calm now, butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, and what do you know, they know the law will catch up to the bad people who did this to them and that justice will be served."
She looked at Jim expectantly, and he did not disappoint. "You think the Park rats have taken care of this problem themselves."
"I'm terrified they did," she said. "I even went up and down the river looking in all the likely places to stuff three bodies."
He laughed out loud.
"Yeah, yuck it up," she said with asperity, "but then I went up to Tikani to see if maybe they were dumb enough to go home. They weren't there, and they hadn't been in a while. Vidar hasn't even heard their engines coming and going. And Jim, I just spent all day on the river, north of Niniltna, true, but nobody jumped out at me and said boo. I didn't see much traffic at all, come to think of it."
"That's not a surprise, given that two people have been murdered in the Park in the past two weeks. Not to mention it's freeze-your-ass cold outside. I'd stay home, too, if I could."
There was a peremptory bark outside and Kate got up to admit the lupine member of the constabulary. Mutt bounded over to Jim and offered an exuberant greeting. She returned to Kate's side and plunked down to begin a thorough grooming of her already magnificent self.
"I like to close a case as much as any cop," Kate said, "but murder? The Johansens?" She shook her head. "That's a hell of a step up for them."
"I've got people looking into Talia's background, see if there is anything there," Jim said. "But the Johansens attacked Johnny, Ruthe, and Van with a two-by-four, let's not forget. Not to mention Ken and Janice, Ike and Laverne, and Chris and Art and Grandma Riley."
"We think they did," she said. "Let's find them first."
He raised an eyebrow. "You got any thoughts on that score?"
"Where to find them, you mean?" Her turn to frown. "According to Vidar, they haven't been back home in maybe as long as two weeks. Out that long, they'll need shelter, and food." She got up and walked to the map of the Park on the wall, and ran her finger down the line that represented the Kanuyaq River. "I'm guessing, if they're still alive, that they've squirreled themselves away in the hills somewhere."
"That narrows it down."
"Yeah, actually it does." Her finger left the river and traced the line of foothills between it and the Quilak Mountains. "There are a lot of old mines back there, a lot of old gold dredges, too."
"Yeah," he said, "probably fifty, a hundred? You able to narrow it down any more?"
"Dan could help us do that." She looked around in time to see the expression on his face. "He's got the most up-to-date records and maps about mines and equipment in the Park. He's always on the lookout for squatters. He'll know if there is anything out there in good enough shape to be used for more than an overnight shelter."
He didn't say anything, and she said persuasively, "Come on, Jim. I don't know what's going on with the two of you, but you have to talk to him sometime."