A Grave Denied

“Neighbors will help,” Virgil said. “I will help.”

“I appreciate that, Virgil, but I was thinking more along the lines of fixing roofs and replacing glass and rototilling gardens. It was nice to have help you could hire. Dreyer crossed a lot of items off a lot of peoples’ lists.”

“He did,” Virgil said. “Have another cookie, Kate Shugak.”

“A good worker, everyone said so,” Kate said.

“A sad thing,” Virgil said, shaking his head. “He did a fine job in the garden last spring. You should come see.” He got to his feet.

“Huh? I mean, okay.” Kate rose. Telma smiled impartially upon them both as Virgil led Kate out of the house.

Virgil paused on the porch. “Your dog. Where is she?”

Kate nodded toward the woods. “Either chasing rabbits or asleep in the sun.”

“Ah. That is good. I have too many rabbits on my land. Come see my garden, Kate Shugak.”

She followed him around the house. Maybe he’d be easier to talk to away from Telma. He was more of this world than his wife. If Dreyer had hurt Vanessa, he might actually have noticed something.

They walked through a copse of evenly spaced trees, all neatly pruned. There were squares of raspberries, blueberries, and currants. The garden was impressive, orderly rows of rich soil thirty feet in length in a plot fifty feet wide.

Every five feet there was a line of flat rocks, providing access to the produce without harming any of it. “Wow,” she said, impressed and envious. She turned. “Where did you-”

The last thing she saw was the bottom of a spade coming straight for her head.

“Ah, shit,” Jim said.

Joh

“You dumb bastard,” Jim said to the corpse, “you dumb bastard! I told you to stay away from this case. I told you you didn’t have the training for this. Goddamn you anyway!”

He whipped off his cap and slapped it against his leg. It stung, even through his jeans. “Shit,” he said again, and went for the crime-scene kit he had in the crew cab. He shot two rolls of film, and made a drawing of the crime scene with measurements before he brought out a body bag and muscled Dandy into it and the bag into the back, scolded all the while by the magpies and the ravens. He thought about fetching the shotgun clipped to the dash of the pickup and letting it loose on them, and then he got his temper under better control.

Dandy had caught a blast in the chest from a shotgun held on him at short range, just like Len Dreyer/Leon Duffy, which meant he either knew his murderer well enough to allow him to get that close even with a weapon in his hand, or his murderer had surprised him.

Jim surveyed the clearing. He didn’t know what the hell Dandy Mike was looking for here, but with the cabin burned there wasn’t a hell of a lot of cover. What with the rain and the tracks from Joh

He quartered the clearing, nose to the ground. Although the rain had washed most of it away, he thought he could see a darker patch of ground that might once have been blood. A very faint trail that might have been dragging boot heels led to the bushes. He went to the truck and opened the body bag. Yes, Dandy had mud built up on the heels of his boots. He zipped the bag back up, avoiding another clear look at what was left of Dandy’s face.

Rigor mortis had set in and had yet to go off, but Dandy had been lying outside and it was still only early May. Jim juggled numbers in his head. He’d probably been shot the day before, Monday afternoon, say anywhere between six p.m. and, oh hell, it could be as late as midnight. Shit squared.

At least he hadn’t been stored in a glacier.

So Dandy had returned to the site of Den Dreyer’s cabin, and had had the monumental bad luck of meeting Len Dreyer’s murderer doing the same thing. Or had the murderer been following him? He’d certainly followed Kate.

He had a teeth-grinding need to find Kate, to make sure she was all right. The strength of the need, the urgency of it, a

And he had more pressing business. He climbed in the pickup and drove to Niniltna as fast as he could without bouncing Dandy’s body out of the back. He made the airstrip in time to see George Perry preflighting the Cessna.

George looked alarmed at Jim’s precipitous approach, or that was what Jim thought. Jim didn’t bother to reassure him. “Got a body, it has to go to the medical examiner in Anchorage right now.”

“You’re kidding me,” George said. He looked at the body bag. “Who is it?”

“Dandy Mike.”

George looked thunderstruck. “You’re kidding me,” he said again.

“No.”

George was begi

“Shotgun, close range, right in the chest.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” George said. “You mean like Dreyer?”

“Exactly like Dreyer,” Jim said grimly.

“When?”

“Yesterday, sometime between six p.m. and midnight, near as I can figure. The lab’ll narrow it down.”

The oddest expression flashed across George’s face. In any other situation Jim would have called it relief, but that made no sense at all. “Get him into Anchorage,” Jim said.

George all but saluted, and was in the air by the time Jim was at the river, making the turn for Bobby’s house.

“I’ve got to get home,” Vanessa said.

Dinah looked at the girl. She was sitting in the middle of the living room, playing with Katya. There was a bowl of magnetic fish between them, and the two were engaged in catching them with miniature fishing poles with magnetic lures. Katya kept nudging Vanessa’s hook out of the bowl but Vanessa kept sneaking it back in again. Both of them were giggling. Dinah didn’t think she’d ever seen Vanessa Cox with a smile on her face before.

“They’ll be worried about me, Mrs. Clark,” Vanessa said, and hooked a pink fluorescent fish with purple lips and fins.

“Dinah,” Dinah said automatically. She looked out the window. It was five o’clock, and there was still plenty of daylight to go. “Why don’t you stay for supper? Joh

Vanessa hesitated. Joh

Vanessa thought about it. “I guess not.”

Dinah made a mental note to know where Katya was every waking moment of her life until she was eighteen, and after that to enjoin Katya to call in every day until she, Dinah, was dead.

She thought of Billy and A

Katya’s protest was immediate and loud, and went out to everyone in the Park, because Park Air was up and ru