"Sorry about the mess," Sheldon said. "My wife's away."
There was a propane cooker and a woodstove with a kettle on top. He moved the kettle to the cooker and turned the burner underneath on high, produced a jar of Sanka and another of creamer and a bowl of sugar crusted around the rim from countless wet spoons dipping into it. The kettle boiled almost immediately and Sheldon used his arm in a sweeping movement to shove everything on the table to one side and set out heavy white mugs and Fig Newtons in a tattered plastic sleeve. Kate doctored her coffee, sipped it, and took a bite of a cookie. She fed the rest to a bright-eyed Mutt sitting alertly at her side.
Hospitality satisfied, Sheldon said, "What's this about?" His face looked hollowed out, his eyes bruised. His thinning hair looked as if it hadn't been combed in a week or washed in a month. He hadn't shaved in a while, either, and his fingernails were grimed with dirt. He spoke in a monotone, without life or hope.
"I think you know, sir."
"Do I?"
Kate made her voice as gentle as possible. "I understand your son was killed this fall."
His head snapped up and he stared at her. His eyes reddened and filled with tears. "Shit," he said, rubbing them with the back of his hand. "Shit. You'd think after all this time…" He dropped his hand and glared at her. "What's that got to do with you?"
"I understand it was an accident," Kate said. "The Cat turned over on him."
"Accident my ass," Sheldon said, firing up, "that fucker Devlin sold me that Cat when he knew the track was about to fall apart. My boy took it out to work on the creek out back, been showing some color. He thought he might pick up a few nuggets, maybe pay for his tuition, price of gold what it is…" His voice trailed away as the energy drained out of him again. "Killed him, that piece of shit Cat did." He looked at Kate again but the glare was gone. "Devlin sold me a defective piece of equipment. Should have known when he let it go so cheap. Should have looked it over more careful." His head drooped. "Should never have let Roger drive it."
"Is that why you killed him, Mr. Sheldon? Is that why you shot Mac Devlin in the back?"
His head came up again and they stared at each other, the silence stretching out between them, pulling tighter and tighter, until he seemed to realize that he'd left his answer too long.
"You were hunting caribou up back of Suulutaq with Howie Katelnikof and Martin Shugak," Kate said. "Mac went out to the Global Harvest trailer, probably to steal what he could and trash the rest. You saw him on your way out. Followed him. Shot him in the back as he was going inside. That the way it happened?"
He was still staring at her. "Was Roger your only son, Mr. Sheldon?"
He blinked, and looked down at the table, his eye lighting on something. He stretched out a hand possessed of a fine trembling and pulled it out of the mess. "Yes," he said, looking at it. "He was our only child."
He handed it to her. It was a photograph of three people, a man barely recognizable as the one sitting in front of her now, not much younger but healthy and happy. The woman was attractively plump, and they were both looking adoringly at the third person in the photo, a gangly young man with a large Adam's apple and silverrimmed glasses perched on a hawk beak of a nose identical to the one on the face before her.
"I'm very sorry," she said, handing the photograph back.
"Me, too," he said.
"You didn't go out there meaning to kill Mac Devlin, did you, Mr. Sheldon?"
"I didn't even know he was going to be there." Sheldon spoke in a dreary tone. "Martin told me they could use an extra hand with the caribou, and I'm a good butcher. They were going to pay me in meat, so I said I would. He told me to come out a day after them, so they'd have some shot and gutted and ready for me to work on. So I did." He turned blind eyes toward the window, the only source of light in the room. "It was like you said. I saw that bastard Devlin at the trailer." He shrugged. "I had my rifle with me." He picked up the photograph again. "Seemed the right thing to do at the time."
She sat in silence with him for some minutes, before getting to her feet. "I'll have to take your rifle in, Mr. Sheldon," she said. "Give it to the trooper in Niniltna. I expect he'll be out here in the next day or so."
He nodded. "Good. Give me a chance to clean up the place." He looked around. "Although I don't know what for. Nobody going to be living here now."
It about killed her to drive off and leave him there, alone with his ghosts.
TWENTY-SEVEN
It snowed for Christmas, dry, fluffy flakes that piled up fast, twenty-eight inches in eighteen hours. Christmas Day dawned clear and cold, a beautiful morning. "Let's ski over to Mandy's after dinner," Kate said.
"Deal," Johnny said.
They even had a tree, small enough for one string of lights and a few bright ornaments, and topped with a tiny Eskimo doll in an exquisitely hand-worked sealskin kuspuk and mukluks that Annie Mike had given all the board members for Christmas. They'd agreed on the rules beforehand. There would be no singing of carols, no recitation of the Christmas story, and each of them was allowed to give the other only one gift. Kate gave Johnny a leather-bound atlas of Middle-earth, elaborately illustrated and annotated, and Jim the four-book memoir by Gerald Durrell about growing up on Corfu between the World Wars, first editions Rachel had found for her on the Internet. Johnny gave Jim a Leatherman, the new Skeletool model. He gave Kate one, too. Jim gave Johnny a small telescope, an Astro-Venture 90mm, with its own spotting scope. "Your math better be up to this," he told him, "because mine isn't."
While Johnny stuttered in vain for something to say that might come close to expressing his surprise, his wonder, and his gratitude, Jim turned to Kate and handed her a small, flat package wrapped clumsily in gold foil. A red peel-and-stick ribbon was stuck to one corner. "Merry Christmas," he said, the corner of his mouth kicking up in a half smile.
It was a copy of Robert's Rules of Order (Newly Revised, In Brief). She opened it and read out loud, her voice breaking on the words, "'So You're Going to a Meeting.'" She closed the book and looked at him through misty eyes. "Oh, Jim."
He leaned over and kissed her. "Tear 'em up, babe."
Later they ate ham roasted with pineapple rings and cloves in a brown-sugar sauce, and after that they strapped on skis and went over the river and through the woods to see Mandy, who heard their laughter long before they arrived and was waiting for them at the door. "Hey, guys! Come on in, I've got pumpkin pie fresh out of the oven."
Chick was home, sober again and cheerful about it. The five of them sat down and tucked into pie and lingered over coffee, catching up on Park gossip and lying about their New Year's resolutions.
Chick gave Mandy a meaningful glance, and Mandy stirred in her chair. "Yeah," she said. "I've got some news of my own."
"Serve it up," Kate said, absorbed in picking up crust crumbs with a licked forefinger.
Mandy looked at Kate's bent head. "I'm the new Talia Macleod."
Kate went very still, one finger halfway between plate and mouth.
Into the silence Mandy said, "Global Harvest asked me a week or so after she died. I told them I had to think about it. Chick and I talked it over, and last week I said I would. I wanted you to hear before they made the announcement, or before Bobby finds out and puts it out on goddamn Park Air."
No one laughed.
"Anyway," Mandy said. "There'll be a press release after the first of the year."
There was a brief silence. As if they were propelled by marionette strings, everyone turned to look at Kate.