A Grave Denied

It vexed Billy, but he did his best for Dandy, putting the screws to Jim Chopin to hire his son once the new trooper post was built. Jim wasn’t notorious for bowing to pressure, and it wasn’t like Billy was going to make life tough for someone who was opening a full-time, fully-staffed trooper office in Niniltna, either. There were less than three hundred troopers in the entire state of Alaska, and when most villages the size of Niniltna had trouble, they had to wait days and sometimes weeks for the law to respond. Oh no, while Billy Mike wasn’t averse to exerting a little paternal coercion, no way was he going to screw up the stationing of a law enforcement professional in beautiful downtown Niniltna. Especially when he hadn’t even had to lobby for it; this had all been Jim’s idea.

Plus the Department of Public Safety had hired the contractor through the Niniltna Native Association, and was already sending out feelers for a cleaning staff. Plus Jim was going to need a place to stay, and so would any prisoners he apprehended in the course of his duty, and Billy was already preparing a bid to submit to the State Department of Corrections to house and feed the accused Jim brought in.

So the upshot was that Billy didn’t know why Dandy wanted the job so badly, either, but in the best of all parental worlds his problem child would have realized the error of his ways, turned over a new leaf, and settled down to become a useful member of society. He might even take an interest in tribal affairs, Billy thought, allowing himself to dream.

In truth?

Dandy wanted the job because he wanted to wear a uniform.

He wanted to wear a uniform because his only competition for the ladies’ favors had been a man in uniform named Jim Chopin, he of the blue and gold, with the Mountie hat and the shiny gold badge, and the big black nine-millimeter strapped to his side. If Dandy had heard one indrawn breath from whatever cozy bundle he had tucked into his arm whenever Jim walked in the Roadhouse door in full regalia, he’d heard a thousand.

Plus, he’d always liked John Wayne.

Plus, how hard could it be? He envisioned a comfortable chair behind a desk, where he would mostly answer the phone and send Jim out on calls.

Plus, there was that very nice state salary, and that even nicer package of state benefits, including retirement, which would add up even faster because they were so far out in the Bush. He could kick back and start drawing a paycheck for doing nothing by the time he was fifty.

Plus, who died and made Kate Shugak god? There was no rule of which Dandy was aware that just because Kate had once investigated sex crimes for the district attorney in Anchorage that she automatically got whatever extra job came with the new trooper post in Niniltna.

So it was with an impure and righteous sense of purpose that Dandy Mike was doing more or less the same thing that Kate Shugak was, albeit with little finesse and still less ability. His progress took him from ex to ex, interviewing girlfriends past and distant past, asking them if Len Dreyer had dropped by to fix anything lately. The amazing thing was, he wound up with a list that wasn’t dissimilar to Kate’s, though neither of them knew it at the time.

Len Dreyer had logged almost as many miles in pursuit of jobs as Dandy had of women.

He also wasn’t quite the monk Kate had been led to believe. Really all that meant was that Dreyer had had nowhere near the action Dandy had, but that he had gotten laid occasionally. “It was kind of weird,” Betsy Kvasnikof said. “He was kind of there, you know? And I was hurting from Dad going off right after I graduated, you know? Mom was mooning around like a lost soul and I was taking care of Rob and Sandy full-time. I guess I was looking for a little comfort, you know?”

“Did you get it?” was Dandy’s tactful reply.

Betsy looked a

Dandy, usually so smooth at getting what he wanted out of women, backed up a little, but not all the way. “Did you, er-”

“Did I sleep with him? Yes. Did I have a good time? It was okay, I guess.” She smiled at Dandy with a sweetness he remembered. “Not as good as some who came after.”

Dandy gri

She laughed. “Oh, you.” She looked over her shoulder. “I think I hear my husband’s truck. Best you leave now.”

“I heard that.” He kissed her good-bye, and then he kissed her again. The back door was closing on him at the same time the front door was opening on her husband, but it wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to. He trod noiselessly around the house and went to his truck, parked discreetly on the shady side of a turnoff down the road.

“When are you leaving?”

Dinah winced. Bobby had no tact. Still, it was a question worth asking.

“When you agree to come with me,” Jeffrey Clark said.

That is, when the answer was something you wanted to hear, Dinah thought.

“Which will be a cold day in hell,” his brother replied. Bobby’s face wore the same expression it had for three days, angry and unyielding.

In that way alone were the brothers similar. Jeffrey was tall, slim, and elegant. His clothes looked freshly pressed, his hair was groomed to perfection, even his teeth, straight and white, looked tailored to fit his mouth.

Not that they’d seen much of them in the last three days, Dinah thought.

His cheekbones were high and sharp, supporting thickly lashed brown eyes. His brow was broad, his mouth firm-lipped, his jaw solid. He looked like something off the cover of GQ, and Dinah’s fingers itched for her camera. She didn’t dare, though. After the first shock of her overwhelming whiteness had faded, Jeffrey Clark had simply pretended that she didn’t exist. She could live with that. She couldn’t live with his attitude toward Katya, which was one of horrified disgust. If he called her daughter a mongrel again, she would rip his tongue out of his throat. She whacked viciously at the bread dough she was kneading on the kitchen counter and tried not to listen to Part 92 of the argument that had started Tuesday upon Jeffrey’s arrival and showed no signs of abating three days later.

“I’m not going anywhere, Jeffie,” Bobby said. “Least of all to Te

“It’s Jeffrey.”

“Sure, Jeffie,” Bobby said.

“Dad’s dying.”

“The sooner the better.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t.”

“He wants to see you before he crosses over.”

Bobby snorted. “I could give a shit what that bastard wants, dead or alive.”

“You have to forgive him, Bobby, the way he’s forgiven you.”

Uh-oh, Dinah thought, almost sorry for Jeffie.

Almost. She kneaded bread and wondered where Kate was. For some reason Kate was the only one among them who didn’t send Jeffrey Clark into pontifical orbit. Maybe he’d fallen into passionate, unreasoning, uncaring love with her. Maybe he’d marry her and whisk her home in lieu of his brother.

Maybe Kate would find whoever burned her cabin down and not hurt him.

Meanwhile, back at the front.

“Is he in pain?” Bobby said.

“Yes,” Jeffrey said.

“Good,” Bobby said, with a grim kind of relish.

“You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t!”

Katya, used to Daddy’s bellows, was unacquainted with the tenor of this one. Her face puckered. Bobby plucked her from the middle of her toys and cuddled her. He dropped his voice but from fifteen feet Dinah could still hear the venom in it. “Ly

Jeffrey’s voice sharpened. “Ly