A Grave Denied Part 18

Dinah stood where she was, staring after him. A smile that was one part mean spread slowly across her face.

If she was not mistaken, Jim Chopin, Alaska state trooper and sworn ladies' man, had just got his feelings hurt.

The four of them wound up at the Riverside Cafe, wolfing down sourdough pancakes and link sausage and eggs fried too hard. Laurel Meganack was there, cooking and serving and flirting with everyone in sight, particularly Jim Chopin, who in Dinah's opinion did not appear to be encouraging her, and who in Kate's opinion did not appear to be beating her off with a stick, either. All of this remained unspoken, of course, but the subtext lay heavily over the table.

They sat around drinking coffee after, Laurel making sure to keep Jim's cup in particular full to the brim. Before Laurel plopped herself down in his lap, Kate cornered her in the kitchen.

"Hey, Kate," Laurel said with a sunny smile, tending to the burgers on the grill, the dishes in the sink, and the coffee urn all at the same time. Watching her smooth efficiency in the compact kitchen made Kate feel like an underachiever.

"Got a minute?" Kate said.

Laurel flipped the burgers in three swift movements. "Now I do," she said, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n. "What's up?"

It was late and Kate had neither the time nor the inclination for diplomacy. "Rumor has it you had a thing with Bernie Koslowski last year."

Laurel's smile vanished. "I don't see where that's any of your business."

"It wouldn't be," Kate agreed, "except that some other stuff might have come out of it."

"Like what?"

"Like some stuff concerning Bernie's wife, Enid."

"She never knew."

"Yeah," Kate said, "she did. And she slept with Len Dreyer to get even."

Laurel didn't change expression. She was a striking young woman, maybe five feet ten with thick reddish brown hair clipped back from her face, large brown eyes, and dark arched brows. She had a high-bridged nose, handed down along with her height from the Yankee whaler rumored to have been her grandfather, and a small rosebud of a mouth. Her T-shirt was cropped and her jeans low-rider, both playing hide-and-seek with the gold ring piercing her navel. Kate winced away from the sight. "That," Laurel said, "would come under the heading of none of my business."

"Yeah," Kate said, "it is, because Len Dreyer's dead."

"I heard. You don't think-"

"I don't think anything, yet," Kate said, "I'm just gathering information. Which I have more of, by the way. I've heard that you had something going on with Len Dreyer, as well."

"What of it?"

Laurel was getting a little defensive, Kate was glad to see. Defensive people usually had to justify their actions, which meant they talked more. "Like I said, I'm just looking for information. I'm not accusing you of anything except sleeping with two different guys at the same time, which we could all plead guilty to at some point, right?"

"Or more," Laurel said, and then looked as if she wished she hadn't.

"I'm only interested in these two. How did things end with Bernie?"

Laurel shrugged. "Well, I think. It only lasted a couple of months. The wife and kids, his own business, not to mention the coaching job, they kind of cramp his style."

Kate took a guess. "He wasn't unhappy you called it off?"

"Well." Laurel thought it over. "He wasn't happy, exactly. Things were pretty good there for a while."

"So he was unhappy."

"No."

"Which is it?"

"We agreed together we should call it off," Laurel said, exasperated. "I wanted more than he could give, and no way was he leaving his family for me. He understood."

"You wanted marriage?"

"Good G.o.d, no!" Laurel said, and surprisingly, laughed. "I just wanted him around more, is all." She winked. "He's got some nice moves. Know what I mean?"

Bernie was a friend and this was not a visual Kate wanted. "What about Dreyer?"

Laurel noticed her arms folded tightly across her chest, and gave Kate a wry smile, inviting her to recognize the body language. The burgers were done and she flipped them to the buns, arranged lettuce, tomato, onions, and pickle on the plates, at which time the deep fryer alarm went off and she went for the basket of fries. "Len was a mistake," she said, shaking the basket.

"How so?"

"And my mistake, too," Laurel said, letting the fries drain. She looked up at Kate. "I thought he was interested." She shrugged and gave a self-deprecating smile. "Seemed like pretty much of a given. Let's face it, the ratio of men to women in the Park is pretty much in our favor."

That was one way of putting it, Kate thought, looking involuntarily through the pa.s.s-through at Jim, thick hair rumpled, laughing at something Bobby had said. He looked up suddenly and caught her staring at him.

Laurel was speaking again and Kate willed the sudden drumming from her ears so she could listen.

"I had him in here to do some fix-up stuff the contractor left behind."

"When?"

Laurel thought. "We opened the first week of school, the first Tuesday after Labor Day. Everybody's back from fishing by then, and Billy and I figured we'd get a boost from the teenagers coming in when cla.s.ses let out." She shrugged. "They don't have anywhere else to go, and I make a pretty mean milkshake, if I do say so myself."

"What did you have Dreyer do?"

"Oh, you know, the linoleum wasn't completely glued down in one corner, they used flat paint instead of glossy on one wall of the bathroom, the garbage disposal wasn't hooked up right. Like that. So I asked around and somebody recommended Len." She sighed theatrically, hand on her heart. "There's just something about a guy with a pipe wrench that does it for me. He had his head under the sink and he'd stripped down to his T-shirt, and he was kinda buff, you know? I, well, I guess I jumped him." Her smile was a little shamefaced. "The troopers could probably run me in for a.s.sault."

"So it was a one-time thing?"

"Yeah. He wasn't that interested in more." Her brow creased. "Funny, you know? I mean, it's not like I'm Miss America or anything. But most Park rats wouldn't turn me down. It's supply and demand, you know?"

"I know," Kate said.

12.

Well, now," Brendan said, grim satisfaction rolling out of Bobby's receiver in waves, "amazing what a name change will do for the database."

"Why didn't his fingerprints pop up on search?" Kate said, leaning into mike range.

The satisfaction changed to disgust. "We're in the process of switching from paper fingerprint cards to electronic files, in order to sign on with the National Fingerprint File. I'm guessing your guy fell through the cracks." A pause, followed by a heavy sigh. "Plus it's the Feebs. I mean, jeeze, what're ya gonna do. Listen, Kate?"

"Yeah?"

"You said this guy kept his head down in the Park?"

"So down he didn't register on hardly anyone's radar."

Another pause. "Yeah. Well. His file ain't pretty. Tell Bobby to check his e-mail."

"Will do. And thanks, Brendan."

A rich chuckle. "I'm adding it to the tab, Shugak. You keep getting me up in the middle of the night. I'm telling you, it's costing you. Horizontally."

She laughed. "Ooooh, you big bully, I'm scared now," and knew enough to know that while 2 a.m. guaranteed few listeners there would always be at least one lonely trapper tuned in, and that the stories about Kate Shugak having radio s.e.x with a member of the Anchorage law enforcement community would be circulating around the Park at first light and crossing the bar at the Roadhouse at opening time.

Brandon hung up and Bobby signed off. Fifteen minutes later, the file on one Leon Francis Duffy arrived in Bobby's in box as an attached file. Kate, too impatient to wait for it to print out, opened it and started scrolling.

Dinah, elbowed to one side, accepted a mug of coffee from Jim and went to sprawl next to her husband on a couch. He grabbed her, heedless of her mug, and whispered in a mock snarl, "When can we get rid of these yo-yos so's you and me can get horizontal?"

She made a token effort to save the coffee and an even more desultory effort to repel boarders before giving up.

Jim pulled up a chair to read over Kate's shoulder. He felt rather than saw her stiffen, and smiled to himself. The smile vanished when he realized that her reaction hadn't been caused by his proximity but by what she was reading.

"Leon Francis Duffy, born in Madison, Wisconsin, graduated Mendota High School in June 1968, joined the army what looks like the week after. Served one tour in Vietnam and received an honorable discharge, which he took in Anchorage, Alaska. Why Anchorage, do you think?"

"Keep reading," she said, tight-lipped.

He did so. "Oh. A year later he was working in the yard at Spenard Builder's Supply, pulling down a regular paycheck, to all intents and purposes a model citizen, and then he gets arrested for molesting a twelve-year-old girl on the way home from school. Charges dismissed. Oh, c.r.a.p. Two more arrests, one ten-year-old, another twelve-year-old."

The printer spat out the last sheet and she thrust the bundle at him. "Here."

He shuffled the paper into order. Kate remained where she was, arms folded, glaring at the screen. Jim continued to read out loud. "The third charge stuck, and Leon Francis Duffy was sentenced to eight and a half." Jim flipped the page. "He was a model prisoner, served the minimum five and a half years for good behavior at Highland Mountain Correctional Facility, and... evidently disappeared from the public record after release." Jim flipped another page. "His probation officer never heard from him even once. Imagine."

"Imagine."

He squinted down at the page. "See the note from the corrections officer he was a.s.signed to?"

"I couldn't read it on the screen," Kate said. "Is it any clearer printed out?"

" 'I regard Mr. Duffy as one of two of the most dangerous prisoners in this facility to be released this year. Mr. Duffy has refused treatment for his condition, refused to accept counseling of any kind, and has never accepted responsibility for the actions that brought him to be incarcerated. If he is released, I am convinced he will go on to commit the same offense again."" Jim looked up. "And they let him go anyway. Imagine."

"Imagine. So he came to the Park."

He looked at the rigid set of her spine and wisely offered no sympathy. "So it seems."

"I never heard a hint, even a whisper that he was bent. I had him out on the homestead. He worked for me."

"He worked for everybody."

"I know." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I've got good instincts, Jim."

"The best in the business," he said. "Listen, Kate. We've all got our blind spots. Mr. Fix-it was yours."

"How much damage did he do here?"

Jim was too smart and too experienced to give the obvious answer. "Not much. It's hard to hide that kind of thing in a small community. If he'd married, say a woman with children from a previous relationship, and if one of those children had been a girl, then I'd be seriously worried. But he didn't." He thought. "He could have been that one guy who was moving himself out of the reach of temptation."

She rubbed at the scar on her neck. "You read the report. You saw what the officer said about Duffy's att.i.tude. It's the cla.s.sic Who, me? response of the s.e.xual predator. And they don't learn, and they don't grow, and they don't ever, ever change, and they never, never stop."

"You would have heard," he said. "I would have heard. Billy, Auntie Vi, Bernie, someone would have heard."

"I sure as h.e.l.l would have heard!" Bobby roared, causing them both to jump. His chair skidded to a halt and he glared impartially at both of them. Dinah, outlined against the gathering light outside the big windows in the creek-facing wall, came soft-footed up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah," Jim said, "we all would have." He looked at Kate. "And none of us did. Maybe he was that guy, Kate."

"No," she said. She moved finally, to save and close the file and swing around to face them. "Who was his corrections officer?"

Jim rifled through the stack. "Melinda Davis. You know her?"

"No. You?"

"No. We can call in the morning, see if she has anything to add."

"No." Kate got to her feet.

"No?" With him sitting and her standing she actually had the advantage of height on him. Not much, but a little. It made him want to pull her into his lap.

"No," she repeated. "I'm going to Anchorage."

"I'm not going to Anchorage," Johnny said. "My mother's in Anchorage. What if we run into her? What if she calls the cops? I'm staying here with Auntie Vi. I've got school."

That last remark showed how truly desperate he was to stay in the Park. She said, and despised herself for doing so, "Some nut burned us out of our house. You want him to do the same thing to Auntie Vi?"

"Oh." He flushed. "No."

"Okay, then."

George rolled the Cessna out of the hangar and they were in Anchorage in an hour and a half, and on the doorstep of Jack's town house on Westchester Lagoon fifteen minutes after that.

Johnny hung back. "I haven't been back here since she sent me away to Arizona to live with Gran. Do you think it's okay?"

"I changed all the locks. And she lives on the other side of town. She'll never know we're here, Johnny." Unless I tell her, she thought.

"Still." He stopped just inside the doorway and looked around like he'd never seen the place before. "How come we're here, anyway? I figured it would be sold. She wouldn't let me come back here and take anything with me."

Kate should have known that, and she should have taken steps to see that Johnny got his belongings following his father's death. She would have, if she hadn't been off wandering in a grief-induced fog of her own at the time. "He left it to me," she said. "It's part of your college fund. I suppose I should rent it out instead of letting it sit empty, but he had mortgage insurance and it's free and clear, with enough left over for taxes." She shrugged. "I'll get around to it one of these days. Find a manager or something."