A Cold Day For Murder Part 6

He strode through the door of the Roadhouse as if he owned the earth.

The pipe liner with the pistol swung his arm in a perfect arc, so that the muzzle of the pistol came to rest on the trooper's forehead, directly between his eyes, centered perfectly below the two gold ta.s.sels.

Every eye, be it fascinated, horrified or approving, was fixed on the scene with equal intensity. For a moment no one moved or spoke. Then the trooper's deep, calm voice came clearly to them all. Directing his level gaze past the pistol and pistol holder, he addressed Bernie in a deep, calm voice. "What seems to be the problem here?"

There was one more moment of tense silence, and then the pipe liner sighed. "Oh f.u.c.k. It's Chopper Jim."

"Who?" Otis said.

"The G.o.ddam trooper, you drunken b.u.m. Now what're we gonna do?"

The trooper stood motionless. The gunslinger's eyebrows met in a single busy bar above his eyes, which were unfocused; he was intent on the mental working out of some weighty problem. At last he leaned toward the trooper, the pressure of the gun muzzle against the trooper's forehead indenting the flesh, and said, "Listen, Chopper, how many years'm I gonna get for pulling a gun on you? "Cause, if it's life, I might's well shootchya, dontchya think?"

The trooper's voice was deep and soothing. "I don't know, Davey, I think we could get it down to ten years or so, with time off for good behavior."

The gunslinger considered this. "Would they put me in with Otis?"

The trooper shrugged as much as he thought wise with a pistol at his head. "Why not?"

"You hear that, Otis? Three squares and a bed and no more welding outside at f.u.c.king ten below."

Otis plucked at Davey's sleeve and whispered. "Oh. Chopper, Otis wants to know if he can bring Cherry there with him."

"I don't see why not."

"Such a deal." Davey dropped his arm, tossed the trooper his pistol and a blinding smile. "f.u.c.k 'em if they can't take a joke," he added, and barfed his dinner, a fifth of Absolut, three quarts of popcorn and two light beers down the front of the trooper's immaculate uniform pants.

About that time half a dozen Alyeska Pipeline security guards roared up on snow machines and were all over the Roadhouse like a swarm of angry bees. They were full of energy in spite of their all-afternoon crosscountry excursion, and it was obvious that the only thing standing between the two prisoners and a distillation of some of that energy was Chopper Jim's calm, level gaze. The two pipe liners drunk but not entirely stupid, themselves demonstrated a reverence for the Alaska Department of Public Safety in general and a touching affection for this representative in particular. It became necessary for them to be restrained; indeed, they displayed a distressing tendency to grasp at Chopper's Jim's large frame with hands, arms, legs and teeth as they were being carried through the door by the Alyeska guards.

At the end of the third run at the door the gunman shouted, "You'll never take me alive, copper!" which effectively destroyed the rest of Kate's gravity, and even Bernie turned away with his lips twitching. He tossed the trooper a damp towel and set up a round of drinks on the house. Everyone rushed for the bar, to knock theirs back and brag about how each of them had singlehandedly disarmed the four, no, seven, wait, wasn't it twelve armed desperadoes who had taken a hundred people hostage in Bernie's Roadhouse on this memorable evening. Chopper Jim mopped off his uniform and accepted a ginger ale.

"This must be the most fun those rent-a-cops have had since Pump Eight blew up," Kate said to Jim Chopin.

"h.e.l.lo, Kate," he said, still calm, hitching his gun belt up a notch over his hips, superbly unconcerned with the damp stains left on his uniform pants. "Haven't seen you this far inside the Park in a while."

"I'm looking for someone."

"I know." She said involuntarily, "How the h.e.l.l could you know?"

"I do come into contact with a few members of Alaska's law enforcement community from time to time." He grinned. Chopper Jim had a grin like a shark, wide, white and predatory, and knowing eyes that saw far too much. They had one effect on offenders of the law, and a completely different one on the opposite s.e.x.

Kate stared at that grin and suddenly remembered she was of the opposite s.e.x herself. "Er, of course," she said, giving herself a mental kick. I'm older than this, she reminded herself sternly.

Chopper Jim scratched Mutt's head with caressing fingers. She flattened her ears and wagged her tail slavishly. Make that the opposite s.e.x of any species. "Found anything yet?" he said casually.

She hesitated. "Nothing for you to act on," she said cautiously. "Some interesting coincidences."

"Want to share?"

She shook her head. "Not yet."

"If you need help--"

"Katya!" Kate looked around and was overrun by what at first glimpse seemed to be a smaller, pudgier and younger version of herself. "Katya, why didn't you tell me you were here? Why didn't you come find me?"

"I thought I had, Xenia," Kate said, chuckling at her cousin's overwhelming enthusiasm, and put a little on her guard as well. "Let's move to a table so we can talk. Nice seeing you, Jim."

Xenia looked up at the big trooper from beneath long lashes and blushed. "Hi, Jim."

The trooper touched the brim of his hat with two fingers. "Xenia."

Xenia tossed her hair over her shoulders and said, still looking at him from beneath her lashes, "You keep saying you'll come over to my house to visit the next time you're in Niniltna, Jim, but you never do. How come?"

The trooper looked her over from head to toe, slowly and carefully and thoroughly, the gaze of an experienced investigator trained to miss not the smallest detail. Sylvester looked at Tweety Bird that way. h.e.l.l, Kate thought, Atilla the Hun had looked at Rome that way. Xenia's blush became even rosier. "How old are you now, Xenia?" the trooper said.

"Not old enough," Kate said, pushing between them. "Good-bye, Jim."

She took her cousin's elbow and steered her toward a vacant table on the other side of the room.

Xenia was dragging her feet, looking over her shoulder, and when Kate looked back Chopper Jim's teeth flashed again and he touched the brim of his hat. "Snap out of it, girl," Kate muttered to her cousin out of one corner of her mouth. "It's not for nothing they call Jim Chopin the Father of the Park."

They were barely seated before Xenia, her mood shifting mercurially, said in an urgent undertone, "Katya, could you get me a job in town?"

"I don't know," her cousin said, her eyes fixed on the girl's face.

"What can you do?"

"Anything," Xenia said eagerly. "I can type, I can file, I got my high school diploma this year."

"Why this sudden urge to vacate the premises?"

"I want to get away," the younger girl said pa.s.sionately. "I want to get out of this place. I want to go where there are cars and movies and restaurants and other kinds of people--"

"Like, maybe, men in uniform," Kate said, smiling a little.

Xenia colored and said defiantly, "Yes, anyone that isn't a dumb Native."

"Hold it now--"

"I don't care! If they aren't dumb, they're drunk, and if they're drunk they hurt people, they even--" She caught Kate's eyes and stopped suddenly. "I want to get away," she said in a plaintive voice.

The girl was young and fresh-faced and would have been pretty but for her sulky eyes and the petulant droop to her lower lip. "I don't know that just wanting to get away is the best reason for moving to town,"

Kate said slowly.

"You've seen emaa, haven't you?" Xenia said with quick suspicion. Kate nodded, and Xenia said with a bitterness that alarmed her cousin, "I knew it! I knew she'd get to you first and turn you against me and ruin my life! She wants me to stay here and learn how to weave baskets and carve ivory and spin qiviut and die of boredom! I hate her! I hate you!" Kate tried to say something and Xenia rushed on. "It's all so easy for you, you made it out, you went to school, you worked in town, you have a choice! Old Snow White, that's what we call you in the village! And now I'm stuck here in this--"

"Xenia!" Kate's voice was like the crack of a whip, and Xenia jumped and gulped back tears. "First of all, emaa didn't turn me against you.

She talked to me, and yes, she wants me to convince you not to go to town." She held up one hand, palm out. "I didn't say I would."

Xenia's woeful face brightened at once. "Then you will help me! Oh, Katya, I knew I could count on you, I knew you would make everything right, when can I go?"

"Hold it! I didn't say I wouldn't try to talk you out of leaving, either." The girl opened her mouth to protest and Kate said sternly, "Let me finish, please." She stared the girl into sullen silence. "I want you to think about what you're doing, Xenia. I want you to think about what you'll be leaving behind. You think it's nothing. I tell you it can be everything. Here, you're surrounded by family and friends, good people you've known all your life, good people who know you, people you can turn to when you're in trouble, people who are always there for your birthday and Christmas and New Year's." Kate sat back in her chair and frowned at her folded hands. "It's different in Anchorage, Xenia. A lot different. In Anchorage you'd be on your own, and it can be very lonely in a big city after living in the bush."

"I don't care, I--"

"The kind of job you're qualified for doesn't pay much and you won't have a lot of money, and being in a city without money is like being hungry in the middle of a herd of caribou without a rifle."

"It doesn't matter, at least I--"

"You won't be able to buy a car until you save up," Kate said inexorably. "And you'll probably have to share an apartment, which means you'll be thrown in at close quarters with someone you've never seen before in your life, maybe some Outsider who thinks Alaska Natives are as dumb as you do." Her raspy voice was cutting, and her cousin had the grace to look ashamed. "They'll make fun of you because you want to celebrate Christmas and New Year's in January the Russian Orthodox way. Others will resent you because you're a Native and you get something for what they think is nothing, ANCSA money and treatment at ANS just for being an Alaska Indian. Some of them will even ask you, and in front of other people, too, why you aren't down on Fourth Avenue with the rest of your relatives."

"I don't care, Katya," Xenia said in a small voice to the tabletop. "I just want out."

Kate searched her face for a long moment. "All right," she said at last. "Think over what I've said for a week or so. If you still feel the same way, I'll see what I can do."

"Oh, Katya, thank you! I knew you'd come through for me!"

"I haven't done anything yet," Kate said dryly. "In the meantime there is something you can do for me."

"What?"

"Emaa tells me you've been seeing one of the park rangers."

Prepared for a strong reaction, Kate was nevertheless shocked by the result of her question. The color drained out of Xenia's face, her body slackened and she swayed in her chair as if she were going to slide down to the sawdust-covered floor. Kate reached out quickly to steady her, but the girl waved her off with one shaking hand. "I'm all right," she muttered, avoiding her cousin's eyes.

"So you were seeing him," Kate said. "Mark Miller."

"Yes." The noise in the bar almost drowned out the girl's nearly inaudible response. She sat still as a parka squirrel scenting a fox.

Kate looked at her bent head, frowning. "Was it... serious?"

There was a brief silence. "I thought so," the girl said, seeming to pick her words with great care. "He said he loved me, that he was going to marry me and take me away from here."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"Six weeks ago, October 26," the girl said promptly.

Kate raised an eyebrow. "You're very certain of the date."

"Yes." Still that almost inaudible voice.

"Did he tell you why he was leaving, where he was going?"

"He just left," Xenia said to the tabletop. "He didn't even leave me the key to his jeep."

"He left it here?"

"Sure," Xenia said, too carelessly. "Left it outside the Roadhouse to seize up in the cold. Dumb Outsider."

"Dumb," Kate said, her voice cool. "You use that word a lot. Dumb is anyone who doesn't do what you want them to, is that it?"

"No it's not!" Xenia's lip quivered. "Anyway, he left without saying a word. He lied to me and then he dumped me, okay? And if you don't mind I don't want to talk about it anymore. I'm going to get a ride back to town." The girl shoved back her chair and flounced out of the Roadhouse.

Kate sat looking thoughtfully after her cousin for a long time, and then rose and went to the bar. "Bernie?"

He came over. "Yeah?"

"Did you know Xenia was dating Mark Miller?"

Bernie reached for a gla.s.s and his bar rag and polished one with the other thoughtfully. "And if I did?"

Kate sighed. Bernie was that rarity, a bartender who didn't gossip about the private lives of his clientele. "If it was just Miller, Bernie, I'd write him off and tell the Park Service to go looking for the body when the snow melts. But the first person to come looking for Miller wound up missing, too, a guy named Ken Dahl. I brought him in here a couple of times."

"I remember. Blond guy, always shaking hands with somebody."

"That's the one," Kate said shortly. "Anyway, he came up here two weeks ago--"

"I know. He came in here, too." Bernie grinned. "Like I said, everybody comes to Bernie's."

Kate hid a long, silent intake of breath, and said, "Would you care to tell me about it?"

"About Miller or Dahl?"

"Let's start with Miller. He was seeing Xenia."

"Yup."

"Often?" Kate said patiently. It did no good to get irritable with Bernie; he'd just close up like a clam and invite you out of his bar.

He had a sign hung over the back of his bar which read, we RESERVE THE RIGHT TO refuse SERVICE, and Bernie took that to be his credo, his guiding light, his raison d'etre, right up there next to NO CUSTOMERS ALLOWED BEHIND THE BAR and FREE THROWS win ball GAMES. "Bernie?" Kate repeated when he didn't reply.

Bernie inspected the polished gla.s.s critically. "I'd call every night often."

Kate raised her eyebrows. "So would I. How serious do you think it was?"

Bernie gave up on the gla.s.s and started wiping the bar rag back and forth across the bar in long, ruminative strokes. "He was d.a.m.n serious. Of course, I don't know that he liked her as much as he liked the fact that she was part of the Park." He smiled a little. "She was indigenous to the place, like the copper and the caribou. He did tell me one night he was planning on marrying her and living here happy ever after."

"She told me he promised to take her out of here," Kate said.

Bernie shrugged. "Xenia always did think she could make the three-pointer when an a.s.sist on a lay-up was all that was in the play book The bar rag stilled, and Bernie raised calm brown eyes, as if to examine the effect his next words would produce. "Martin didn't like it."

Kate stared at him. "Xenia's brother?" she said. "He didn't like her going out with Miller?"

"No," Bernie said judiciously, "actually that's not quite true. Martin hated it. He hated Xenia going out with an Anglo and an Outsider in the first place, and then he found out Miller was a ranger. Talk about adding insult to injury. He got pretty loud about it."

Kate felt a sense of foreboding. "Where did he get pretty loud about it?"