The Singing of the Dead (19 page)

Paula hadn't had any enemies, he said. She had lived out here because the rent was a third of what it was in town. Her parents were dead, and she'd been an only child. Where had she come from originally? He thought Chicago. Or maybe it was Cincinnati, he wasn't sure. She'd moved up with her mother twelve years before, and supported herself by writing grant applications for nonprofit corporations and hiring herself out to do research.

“Mr. Boothe, did she say or do anything last night in any way out of the ordinary?”

He shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

“What was this new idea she had that she wanted to work on?”

He blew his nose again. “She'd found a story about a murder back in, god, I don't know, 1919 or something. One of the girls in one of the hook shops in Niniltna, back when it was party town for the Kanuyaq Copper Mine. She was all excited about how she could work it into her novel. She couldn't wait to get started.” He sat, knees splayed, hands dangling between them, chin sunk on his chest.

“Anything else?”

He stared at the ground, oblivious to the afternoon growing cooler around them, looking unutterably weary. “She was so nice. And so smart. And she read.” He looked up. “Books,” he said.

“I know.”

“She liked to jitterbug. Did you know that?”

“No. I didn't know that.”

“She was good at it, too. Danced me right off the floor more than once. When I had to chaperon a school dance, Paula would come and we would dance, and the kids would stand around in a circle and clap and yell and whistle.” He smiled at the memory. It didn't last. “There'll never be anyone else for me. Paula was it. At my age, you just don't meet a lot of women you like.” He raised his head, blinking away tears, and saw her watching him. “You're still young. You think you've got all the time in the world. Well, you don't.” He got up and walked a few steps toward the battered Toyota Land Cruiser parked next to Tony's Escort. He stopped halfway there and wheeled around. “You're sure?” he said. “You're sure she's dead?”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Boothe.”

His shoulders sagged. “Where is she?”

“An autopsy is required in every incidence of violent death in the state of Alaska.”

“Can I have her back, afterward? I'd like to see her buried, if I may.”

“I'll tell Chief Hazen.”

“Thank you. Thank you for everything. You've been very kind.” When the Toyota had backed halfway down the driveway, he stopped and rolled down the window. “She said she'd married well!”

“Who had?”

“The hooker! Paula said she'd married well! That's all I remember, though!”

“Thanks!”

He waved and rolled the window back up.

Kate sat where she was for a good ten minutes after the sound of the engine had faded away. Gordy Boothe must have walked into the restaurant the night before five minutes after Kate had walked out. Like him, she wished he'd talked Paula into staying with him, or that he had stayed at the trailer with her.

It was early afternoon, about four o'clock. She ought to go back into town and catch a ride of some kind to Niniltna. Mutt wasn't back from lunch yet. She thought of the grizzly Gordy Boothe had heard in the bushes the night before, and hoped Mutt didn't bring it back with her.

She could have called Mutt, but she didn't. She wasn't ready to go back to town yet, to be around people yet. She went back into the trailer and into the bedroom and took a second look at Helm . Kid puts on a weird helmet, acquires another personality; father beats him with a stick until he learns how to get out of its way: he goes to war at the head of an army and kicks serious enemy ass. She was immersed from the first page, and didn't hear the quiet purr of an approaching engine. She didn't even hear the door open. The Airstream, sitting on a solid foundation of cement blocks, didn't shift. The hydraulic hinge slammed the door closed though, and Kate looked up from where she was sitting on the floor, back to the bookshelf, startled but not quick enough. The tiny hallway was so short that the bedroom could be reached in one long step. There was a creak of wood over her head, and Kate looked up to see the five-shelf bookshelf and all its books come crashing down on her.

* * *

Kenny Hazen dropped Jim Chopin at the Ahtna airport, and Jim would have been in Tok by now if he hadn't discovered a minute trace of oil on the hose leading from the engine to the oil pan. So he had to track down a new hose, and that took time, but it wasn't like he was in a hurry. There wasn't a lot going on back at the ranch. Well, except for Steve Glatter trying to kill his wife Barbara and Terry Moon when he caught them parked on a very short dead-end road a mile away from the turnoff of the Glatter homestead, clearly visible from the highway. If somebody had to do the nasty, why couldn't they practice a little discretion? It would make his life a lot easier. As it was, Terry was in the hospital, Barbara had retained an attorney, and Steve was in jail on the charge of assault in the third degree with the handle off a meat grinder. Terry wasn't all that beat up, and the Glatters had three minor children. Assault in the third was only a Class-A felony. Jim would have downgraded it to assault in the fourth or even reckless endangerment if he'd thought he could have gotten away with it, but the magistrate on duty that day had been partying late the night before at the Do Drop and, as a consequence, had been in a severe mood the following morning.

It was six o'clock by the time he finished the job. It wasn't one a licensed A&P mechanic would have to sign off on, so all he had to do was wash his hands and he was halfway home.

Still. It wouldn't hurt to drive out to Paula Pawlowski's trailer, which he had visited with Kenny Hazen that morning, and see if Kate was done communing with her new best friend's spirit. Not that he owed her a ride home or anything, but it was the neighborly thing to do.

You've got it bad, boy .

“Yeah, and the horse you rode in on,” he said out loud, alarming the young man who fueled planes for the local Chevron dealership.

He borrowed the airport manager's truck and drove out to the trailer, on the way nearly sideswiped by a dark green truck speeding in the other direction. He was sorry he didn't have lights and siren, sorrier still that he'd left the ticket book back in the plane, and sorriest of all that the truck he was driving had a shimmy in the front end and a distressing tendency on the part of the gearshift to resist going into and popping out of third gear, or it would have been his very great pleasure to haul this sorry excuse for transportation in a U-turn and give chase. He didn't catch the tag number, either.

It was in no very cheerful frame of mind that he pulled into the driveway. For one thing, he didn't know what the hell he was going to say. “Want a ride home?” wasn't quite going to cut it this time.

When he got out of the truck, he heard a dog barking. It got louder as he approached the trailer, and when he got to the door he saw Mutt hurling herself at the window in it. If there had been a little more glass, she would have broken through.

“Mutt!” he said. “Stop it! Kate, where are you? Kate!”

He barged inside, or he would have if Mutt hadn't hit him square in the chest on her way out. She hit the ground over his head and made for the road, barking all the way, sharp, urgent barks.

“Mutt!” he roared, and she skidded to a halt. “Stay! Stay right there, girl!” She took a few steps toward him and whined, a few steps toward the road, whined again, and was repeating this dance as he got up and made for the trailer door. The next thing he knew he was on the ground again, Mutt having caught the hem of his pants leg and yanked him off his feet. “What the hell?” he said, staring up at her. “Will you knock it off! Jesus!” He got to his feet again and made the trailer in one giant step. Mutt started barking again.

A hurricane appeared to have passed through the neat home he had seen that morning. Every dish, serving bowl, pot was out of the cupboards. The box of Tide had been emptied into the middle of the floor, along with the garbage and a box of Special K. The clothes had been torn off their hangars, the closet emptied.

There was no indication that this was an office as well as a home: no desk, no filing cabinet, no fax machine. There were books, though, and every single one of the books was on the floor, in heaps he had to step over. Those bookshelves not fastened to the walls had been overturned, as if the hurricane had wanted to look behind them.

A pocket door between the kitchen and living area had been locked from the other side. He kicked it out of its frame and found more chaos: the covers ripped from the bed, the mattress and springs tipped to the floor, and more books pulled from their shelves and more bookshelves pulled from the walls.

Kate was nowhere to be found.

Mutt's barks became louder and more frantic.

There was a second door, however, that had been hidden behind one of the bookshelves. It was slightly ajar, held so by a book that had fallen into the crack. There were more books on the ground outside.

He waded back to the front door, taking one last look around in a vain attempt to see if Kate had even been here. He damned her for not carrying a purse, standard issue for every other woman in the world, but oh no, not her. He gave a pile of books a savage kick and missed, and the toe of his boot hit the corner of the bookcase instead. He let out a yell and tried to hop up and down, but there wasn't any room. His good foot hit another pile of books and they tilted, and he lost his balance and fell heavily on another pile. Outside, Mutt's barks increased in frequency and intensity.

He damned the books loudly and with imagination, glaring down at the bookcase as if it were animate. It lay drunkenly on one side with a piece of rubber caught in a splinter on one corner.

He climbed to his feet and reached for the door. Mutt bounded over, alternately whining and barking, her attitude one of frantic urgency. “Hold on, girl, I think we're onto something here.” There was a long, thick rubber band dangling from the doorknob on the inside, snapped in half, ends ragged. It matched the piece of rubber caught on the splinter on the corner of the bookcase. He let go of the knob and the door slammed shut, nearly catching Mutt's nose in it.

If the bookcase were raised to what he thought was its proper place, at right angles to the door, someone could wrap a long rubber band around the doorknob and, providing it were long and thick enough, stretch it to wrap around the corner of the bookcase. Thus keeping the door closed.

Why?

He opened the door again, let it slam shut again. Pretty efficient hydraulic hinge. Why bother with the rubber band?

He thought of how Mutt had been on the other side of that door.

Suppose Mutt was on the outside, Kate on the inside and in trouble.

Suppose whomever Kate was in trouble with was also on the inside.

That whoever would think three or four times before stepping into the teeth of a one hundred and forty pound dog who was half gray wolf and all fangs.

He turned and looked at the pocket door he'd kicked off it's hinges.

Suppose whoever had come in, coldcocked Kate, searched the trailer, and had prepared to leave, to find Mutt at the front door. The back door was only a few feet away down the same wall, reachable by Mutt in a single bound.

Whoever was stuck.

Unless whoever rigged the door with the rubber band and then propped it open a crack—say with a paperback, perhaps? There were enough of them laying around. Whoever could be fairly certain that with even a little toehold, Mutt and her claws would be able to get the door open, just not right away, which might be the point. When the door opened, the book would fall out.

He looked outside. The paperback edition of The Handmaid's Tale , a book which had left him about as terrified upon reading it as he was now, lay on the concrete square in front of the door. He'd fallen on it when Mutt tackled him and hadn't noticed.

As the book fell out, the dog got in. The hydraulic hinge would close the door. Hydraulic hinges were common in the north, helped to keep the cold out when you had your arms full of groceries. The doorknob was a smooth metal. Even if a dog was smart enough to open a door, this one wouldn't open easy.

He turned and looked at the pocket door again. The rubber band would take even Mutt some time to negotiate. Maybe just long enough for whoever to scoot to the back of the trailer and close the pocket door, and lock it behind them. Then all whoever had to do was wait for the front door to close behind Mutt, forming a neat little trap.

Whoever then exited the back door.

Why did whoever take Kate?

Maybe whoever didn't take Kate, maybe Kate followed.

But then there would have been no need for the neatest little animal trap Jim had seen in a long time.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, and yanked at the door knob. Standing stiff-legged on the other side, Mutt growled at him, the first time she'd ever done so. She lunged forward and grabbed a fold of his blue uniform pants, and it wasn't her fault she didn't get a mouthful of thigh while she was at it. Jim almost overbalanced again. “Damn it, I'm coming, let go!”

She didn't believe him and backed out of the trailer, pulling him inexorably forward. “Damn it, Mutt, I said I was coming! Now let go, right now!” He glared down at her.

She let go long enough to bark at him. She trotted toward his truck, back toward him, toward the truck, and barked again.

A dark blue Ford Escort sat in front of his borrowed truck. He had thought it belonged to Paula Pawlowski, but now he remembered he hadn't seen it this morning. It was open, and empty but for a large box of dinner-size paper napkins in the trunk. The registration was in the glove box, in the name of Luiz Antonio Orozco y Elizondo, which name meant nothing to Jim. The keys were in it. He wiped a hand across the back seat, and it came up covered with a lot of stiff, gray hairs that exactly matched the coat of the dog who squeezed into the car, turned around on the size of a quarter and barked once, right in his face, and then growled again, as if to underline the bark. If Kate had borrowed this car, if she and Mutt had driven out to the Pawlowski trailer in it, then why had she left it behind?