A Grave Denied

Kate displayed neither shock nor anger. She’d been expecting Kate waved a dismissing hand. “But really, a decent copy machine would be a legitimate operating expense, seeing as how government copy machines need access codes to operate, which makes it easy to track who’s copying what.”

Joh

At that point Jane’s language deteriorated. The only good news was that she was keeping her voice down. Joh

Eventually even Jane ran out of new and interesting ways to describe Kate’s relationship with her ancestors and had to fall back on the tried and true. “You fucking bitch,” she whispered, the words coming out in a long hiss. “Do you know how long it took for me to get my credit straightened out? And all that stuff you ordered on my Visa card! And the money you took out of my bank account! You’re nothing more than a common thief!”

At that Kate did wince. “Surely not common,” she said.

Joh

“I won’t pay you a dime in child support,” Jane said.

Joh

“No one’s asking you to,” Kate replied evenly.

Jane turned on Joh

He met his mother’s eyes with a flinty composure that surprised and pleased Kate. “Dad had a college fund set aside for me. Don’t worry, I’m not asking you for a dime.”

“We’re heading back to the Park tomorrow,” Kate said. “If you like, Joh

“Like hell I could,” Joh

“I don’t care if I never hear from the ungrateful little bastard ever again,” Jane said. Seriously stung, she was eager to hurt back.

Joh

“Okay,” Kate said, getting to her feet before the blood on the table was more real than imagined. “We’re done here. Goodbye, Jane.”

She hustled the boy out of the restaurant and into the Subaru, and they were out of the parking lot and speeding down Northern Lights Boulevard before she realized she’d stuck Jane with the bill.

Joh

“Home tomorrow,” she said out loud, and felt good about it for the first time since the cabin burned down.

After Joh

There was a long silence, but no click and no dial tone. Background noise included voices and the inevitable television. Kate said, “If you can, get to a paper and pencil.” There was another long silence, followed by scrabbling sounds. “I know a counselor who works with kids who have been sexually abused. Her name’s Colleen Diemer.” She recited the number once, waited, and repeated it. “She’s very good. If you and Gary need to talk, she can refer you to someone who counsels adults. But whether you two do or not, get your daughter to her, or to someone like her.” She paused, and continued with difficulty. “There are things she just can’t say to you or to Gary. Things that need to be said. Colleen Diemer. Her office is in one of the medical buildings on Lake Otis, just north of Tudor. Her staff is really good about working out payment. There are all kinds of state and federal programs to subsidize the fees.”

Fran said nothing.

Kate took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. “Colleen is very trustworthy, Fran. She’ll understand about Gary. She won’t call the house, she won’t send you a bill there.”

“Who’s that, honey?” Gary’s voice said in the background.

“No, thank you,” Fran said, “we’re happy with our long distance service as it is. Good-bye.”

There might have been a whisper of a “thank you” as Kate hung up the phone, but it might also have been her imagination. She went back to Terminator, which was a positive haven of peace and nonviolence compared to some of the homes she’d been into on the job.

She only hoped she had not visited one of them this afternoon.

14

Dandy was still torqued at what he saw as Jim Chopin’s patronizing dismissal of Dandy’s services. He was so torqued that he had slept alone the night before in spite of overtures on the parts of two different women.

His bed was located in the apartment he’d fitted up over the warehouse that sat on the five acres of land he’d received as a result of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1972 back when he was all of nine years old. The five acres sat on the river, and his father had built the warehouse as a place to park his fishing boat during the winter. Dandy’s apartment had started life as a net loft, but then the Native Association had begun paying dividends and Billy had started paying someone else to mend his gear, and Dandy had asked for the space. Billy shrugged. It was Dandy’s land, after all.

Dandy hadn’t done much beyond installing a bathroom and enough of a kitchen to allow his girlfriends to cook for him. The floor was hardwood with a couple of thick sheepskins scattered around for effect. A king-sized bed dominated one corner, with nightstands on either side with drawers big enough to accommodate condoms in bargain-size boxes and a weekend’s worth of clean clothes for sleepovers. In another corner there was a wide, long brown leather couch next to a Barcalounger, which sat in front of a 32-inch television. There was also a combination VHS/DVD player, and a set of shelves with an extensive selection of movies, most of them starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. Dandy didn’t bother with satellite television, as he wasn’t into any sport you couldn’t play from a horizontal position and everything else was blood and gore. Women didn’t like blood and gore, as a rule. Dandy was willing to watch anything that got women into the mood, and he was continually expanding his movie library with that end in view. Audrey Hepburn was a recent discovery. The scene with Peter OToole under the museum stairs in How to Steal a Million had in recent testing proven itself to be fail-safe. He was hoping it would come out on DVD before his VHS copy was completely worn through.

Hands behind his head, he frowned at the ceiling. He was still a

He was more a

Easily sidetracked, he wondered about that. It wasn’t like Kate was a nun, she’d had her share. There was Ethan Int-Hout, and that doofus Anchorage investigator with more and blonder hair than Farrah Fawcett, and then there was Jack Morgan. The Kate-and-Jack thing went way back. Jeeze, Jack had been an okay guy, but sticking to one partner for, well, hell, he guessed it had been years. Years, for crissake. Dandy’s mind boggled. A real man wanted a little variety in his life. Sleeping with the same woman for years, years, that wasn’t variety, that was monotony, that was boredom. Dandy loved undressing a woman for the first time, loved the small discoveries that came with the act, the placement of a mole, the bony knees, the pillowy thighs. He loved finding out that a natural blonde wasn’t. Was she or wasn’t she? Only Dandy and her hairdresser knew for sure.