He scowled. She waited. Mutt groomed.
"When he found Deem's body?" Jim said.
"Yeah?" Kate said.
"He tampered with the crime scene." She waited.
He sighed. "Deem had the deed to the Smiths' forty acres in his pocket. He and Smith were co-owners. It retains subsurface rights."
"Oh," Kate said. "Like if they found gold on the creek."
"Dan's pretty sure it was all about the gold. He thinks Louis bankrolled Smith, and it was why he was going to marry Abigail and why Smith was going to let him. I think it's why Louis was headed up to the Step that day, to establish their mining rights."
"Why did Dan take the deed?"
"Ah, jesus, who knows. He was half in the bag for one thing. Moron. Nobody knows better than him, unless maybe it's you, that you don't remove evidence from a crime scene."
"You didn't charge him."
"No," he said glumly, "I didn't charge him. I should have, but I didn't."
Considering what he himself had done or not done in the matter of the murder of Louis Deem and the Koslowski murders, he was as at fault as Dan was of withholding evidence. Maybe, he thought now, that might be why he'd stayed mad at Dan for so long. It was hard to forgive someone for behavior of which you yourself were guilty. You knew only too well how much in the wrong you were.
She was silent for a moment, and then she repeated herself. "You have to talk to him sometime, Jim. If nothing else, you have to work with him."
"Fine," he said without enthusiasm. "You go on home. I'll detour up to the Step."
"No need," she said. "I passed him on the way here. Looked like he was headed for Bernie's."
He brightened a little.
They got up. Kate paused in the doorway. "Howie still in the back?"
"Yup."
"Good."
"Well, he won't leave until I catch whoever shot Mac, and when he heard about Talia I thought he was going to wet his pants. As long as I don't need the room and he buys his own food, I'm okay with it." He hesitated. "I did talk to Judge Singh, and she says that lacking anything more than a tire print we don't have a case against him for Louis."
"Did you tell her about the aunties?"
"Yes," he said, a little apprehensively. When she didn't go off on him he relaxed again. "She says she's disinclined to issue a warrant for a dog on the say-so of Howie Katelnikof."
"The aunties still not talking?"
"Haven't seen them today, I've been otherwise engaged. And Howie of course is now reneging his-quote-nonconfession confession-end quote-right, left, and center. He says he must have been drunk, and I hadn't Mirandized him, and I was threatening him anyway and he got scared and confused and he would have said anything to get me to leave him alone, and-"
"I get the picture. Still, good that he's here where we can keep an eye on him."
She preceded him out the door and she didn't see the curious look he gave her.
TWENTY-ONE
No belly dancers or church socials this evening, just the regular crowd, a group of old farts playing pinochle at the round table beneath the blare of the basketball game on the television hanging over their heads, and a mosh of couples on the handkerchief-sized dance floor barely moving to the competing blare of Linda Ronstadt's "Blue Bayou." About half the tables were filled, the amount of empties per tabletop indicating the seriousness of the drinkers seated there, although nobody seemed especially drunk. No one seemed especially happy, either, except of course for the four Grosdidier brothers, although when Kate took a closer look she could see that Matt seemed a little strained.
"Damn," Jim said, looking at the Grosdidiers, "I hadn't realized the extent of the damage. I wonder what the other guys look like."
Nick and Eve Waterbury sat at one table. Eve had one timidly restraining hand on Nick's arm and radiated anxiety. She was saying something in a low voice. Nick had his face turned away. At first glance he looked sullen, at second angry, at third despairing. Kate made a mental note of distance and elevation. Nick wasn't much of a drinker but he had a temper, and it looked like Eve was testing it.
Jim gave her a gentle nudge with his elbow. The four aunties were sitting in the corner at their regular table. There was no greeting called to Kate and Jim, just four heads studiously bent over the current quilt, a bright, geometric splash of primary colors.
Bernie was behind the bar, a tall, thin presence with a calm face and what hair he had left bound back into a ponytail that reached to his belt.
Strike that, Kate thought, looking at Bernie, not thin, gaunt. Bernie looked as if he hadn't had a good meal since his wife died. His cheeks were hollowed out, his eyes sunken, the tendons of his hands stood out like whipcord. The past year had aged him ten. "Hey, Kate," he said. "Mutt."
Instead of rearing up to place both front feet on the bar as was her invariable habit, Mutt trotted around it to butt Bernie's hand with her head. She looked up at him with what could only be described as a kind, loving gaze, if anything coming out of predatory yellow eyes could be called kind. For a moment Bernie seemed to stop breathing. Then he cuffed Mutt gently, pulled down a package of beef jerky, and said, albeit a little shakily, "Get out from behind the bar before I make you buy a round for the house."
Her tail swept a graceful arc. She nudged him again and then trotted back around the bar to Kate.
"Jim," Bernie said, looking over Kate's shoulder.
"Bernie," Jim said, looking at the bottles lined up in back of the bar.
"What'll you have?"
"Coffee," Kate said, taking a stool, "and heavy on the cream."
"Same," Jim said, sitting next to her.
On Jim's other side was Dan O'Brien, his back to them as he continued his ongoing attempts to romance Bernie's newest barmaid, one Laura Delgado, a Latina import from California who had followed a Bristol Bay fisherman north a year before. He had not proved to be as attractive in his natural habitat as he had been on a free-spending spree through the clubs of her native Los Angeles, and she had left him to start hitchhiking home the previous fall. In Ahtna she'd stopped to replenish the treasury by waiting tables at the Lodge, where she'd met and fallen madly in love with Martin Shugak.
That she'd fallen in love with Martin Shugak was a nine-day wonder in the Park, but, Kate thought, perhaps not so difficult, because no matter what Auntie Edna said the only person who could fall in love with Martin would be someone who didn't live in the Park and therefore did not know him well. At any rate little Laura Delgado had followed Martin home to Niniltna, and at the end of the road Bernie gave her a job. She was short and plump with polished golden brown cheeks, a perpetually wide smile, a perfect set of large white teeth, and a flirtatious look in her bright brown eyes that was going to get her into trouble before breakup. It didn't hurt that she sounded like Jennifer Lopez, and had considerably more cleavage.
"Bernie," Kate said in a quiet voice, "how often has Nick Waterbury been in here lately?"
Bernie followed her gaze and said with a noticeable lack of interest, "He's in here four nights out of five anymore."
"Eve always with him?"
"Sometimes yes, sometimes no."
"He drinking a lot?"
Bernie shook his head. "Not a lot. Steady, though."
"Yet another charge to put on Louis Deem's tab," Kate said.
Little Mary Waterbury, daughter and only child of Nick and Eve, had been Louis's third wife and last victim. She half rose to her feet. "Maybe I should-"
"No." Bernie held up a cautionary hand. "Leave them alone." His mouth twisted. "It's all we can do for them now, but we can do that much."
She looked at Jim. "Bernie's right," he said. "You can't fix this. If it's gonna get fixed, Nick and Eve have to do it."
What he didn't say but what they both knew was that most marriages did not survive the death of a child.
"Hey, Laura," Bernie said. "Thirsty people waiting."