Later, at the post, he repeated his words and signed the statement and shuffled into the cell vacated when Greenbaugh was moved to Anchorage. He lay down on the bunk, clasped his hands on his chest, and closed his eyes. He looked ready to be placed in a coffin.
Kate and Jim gaped at him for some moments before Jim recalled himself and closed and locked the door. Back in his office he repeated Kate's totally inadequate words with force and feeling. "Jesus Christ. I feel like I ought to be fired. Hell, I feel like I ought to resign in protest of my own total and complete incompetence and malfeasance and just all around general stupidity."
He dropped his head into his hands. His voice sounded tinny and far away. "This is what comes of crossing the line, Kate. You think the right reason trumps doing the wrong thing, and then you never get to the truth, when the truth is mostly a good thing and almost always the best thing to get to."
"I can't believe I missed it," Kate said, still dazed.
"I will never do something like that again." Jim said it like he was taking a vow. "I don't care what the provocation is. I don't care if the perp is Satan himself. Never ever again."
"He was sitting right there in the courtroom when the verdict came down," Kate said.
"I was so sure I knew how Louis Deem died. I was so sure I knew who did it, and why, and I worked so hard to prove otherwise that I couldn't even see who had the biggest motive of all."
"We all saw how angry Nick was," Kate said. "It's Morgan's First Law. 'The nearest and the dearest got the motive with the mostest.' And I was so blinded by my hatred of Louis Deem that I didn't even think of it."
They sat in silence, trying to move beyond stunned disbelief to acceptance.
Kate looked up and said, "We have to tell Bernie."
He felt his expression change. "What?" she said.
"Nothing," he said. "You're right. We have to tell Bernie, and the aunties. And Howie, the little weasel."
Later that night he lay in bed next to Kate and wondered why he hadn't told her about Willard right then and there. It had been the perfect moment.
There were lots of reasons.
It would hurt her.
It would hurt the aunties, because she would surely tell them.
It would hurt Willard, who would very likely wind up in long-term, court-mandated psychiatric care somewhere that wasn't the Park and might not even be Alaska, which would very probably kill him. He was cared for where he was, more or less, and absent the fell influence of Louis Deem was unlikely to be incited to burglary and murder a second time. His trigger was dead and buried.
And telling wouldn't change anything. Enid and Fitz would still be dead.
All telling Kate about Willard would do was make him feel better. Carrying around a secret this big was a blight and a burden. It weighed on him, preyed on his mind, made him feel guilty, which made him feel cranky and snappish. Confession was good for the soul, and all that crap.
Still, he was a big, strong man. He'd taken an oath to serve and to protect.
But what it all came down to, really, was that telling Kate about Willard would hurt her.
It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to sleep with Talia Macleod. Attractive and willing and every bit the dog he was, how could he resist her? More to the point, why on earth would he? No doubt that it would have been a very enjoyable evening. Who would it have hurt? Not Talia. Not Jim. Not Park society, or he'd have been stoned to death by now.
Hard questions. Easy answer, though.
Kate. He hadn't slept with Talia because Kate would have been hurt.
Funny how more and more often the focus of serving and protecting, for him, came down to serving and protecting Kate Shugak.
He rolled over and slid an arm around her waist, pulling her into the curve of his body, tucking his knees into the backs of hers. He nuzzled the nape of her neck, and she made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a purr.
He slept.
A MONTH LATER
ANCHORAGE, AK (AP): Global Harvest Resources Inc. (GHRI), the world's second largest gold producer, announced today the results of supplementary exploratory drilling in the Suulutaq Mine during last summer's drilling season.
A clearly euphoric Bruce O'Malley, GHRI's chief executive officer, said that core samples taken by the five rigs working 17 new holes had still not discovered the limits of the Suulutaq deposits. O'Malley said that GHRI would be mobilizing two more drill rigs next year. "It's now the second largest mine of this type in the world," O'Malley said. "If we keep drilling, we might get to be the largest."
GHRI currently estimates that the Suulutaq ore deposit contains 42.6 billion pounds of copper, 39.6 million ounces of gold, and 2.7 billion pounds of molybdenum. The gold alone at current prices is estimated to be worth over $35 billion. GHRI is estimating that it will take $3 billion to $5 billion to develop the mine, and hundreds of millions of dollars to operate it. "Global Harvest is in this for the long term," O'Malley said. "We'll see in the next five generations of Alaskans."
Suulutaq is located on state lands near the Iqaluk Wildlife Refuge and the headwaters of the Gruening River, one of the major tributaries of the Kanuyaq River, home of the world-renowned run of Kanuyaq River red salmon. The confluence of the two rivers is the calving grounds of the Gruening River caribou herd.
Significant opposition is developing among local residents, including fishermen, hunters, trappers, and some Alaska Natives who are concerned that by-products of the toxins used in the mining process will pollute the groundwaters that are the source of the Kanuyaq and irreparably harm salmon and other wildlife.
The Kanuyaq salmon fishery is currently valued at $110 million.
Dana Stabenow
