Dana Stabenow - A Fine and Bitter Snow

Kate wondered why murderers were so in love with the sound of their own voices. Still, the longer Christie talked, the longer Kate had to figure out a plan. Any minute now, she would. She edged another inch across the floor. If she pounced, she could grab the barrel of the rifle; if she was lucky, maybe even before Christie could get off a shot. Or she could dive behind the couch. And do what? Throw books?

“Pete and I will marry, of course,” Christie said dreamily. “He’ll like the idea of a landed wife. And then we’ll see what we can do about breaking that land trust and putting the land to more profitable use. Pete thinks the road into the Park should be paved, or so he was telling me this afternoon. We might even subdivide.” Christie smiled. “Just this one little problem, then I’ll be on my way.”

Her eyes went flat. The barrel straightened, the muzzle zeroed in on Kate’s chest, and her finger began to squeeze the trigger. Kate took a flying leap over the back of the couch, but not soon enough. Christie swung the rifle, following her. The shot thundered in the little room and filled it with the acrid smell of gun smoke. The bullet hit Kate in the side and lifted her up and back, slamming her into the bookcase. She fell behind the couch, caught beneath an avalanche of books.

“Damn it,” she said, irritated. Looking down, she saw blood rapidly soaking the front of her shirt. It felt warm and wet. It was a new shirt, too, and Pendletons didn’t come cheap. “Damn it,” she said again, more mildly this time.

Christie’s face appeared over the back of the couch, flushed, radiant, triumphant. As she raised the rifle a second time, Mutt juggernauted through the open door like an avenging angel and hit Christie in the small of the back, knocking her into the woodstove. There was a sizzle of burning skin and a cry.

Christie got off one more shot before the rifle spun out of her hands and landed beneath the table. She reached for it, but Mutt’s teeth sank in long before her arm hot there and the last thing Kate heard before the spreading pain pulled her under was Christie’s scream.

When Kate woke, it was to pain, the whole left side of her body infused with it. She muttered an inarticulate protest. She hated pain. Pain hurt. She tried to say so.

“It’s all right,” a voice said; “we’ll give you something. Drink this.”

She drank, felt the prick of a needle, slid back down into darkness.

She dreamed in bits and pieces. An anxious whining, a sandpapery tongue. Jim swearing. Hands hurting her, something tight around her chest. Hands on her shoulders. Hands on her feet. The jolting agony of a drive in the back of someone’s truck. A strong arm holding her steady, a solid shoulder against her cheek. The drone of an airplane engine, with her flat on her back on the floor, her legs beneath the pilot’s seat, her eyes staring up at the bare ribs of the fuselage.

Waking the second time, she found a woman staring down at her. “Hello, Kate,” she said. “I’m Adrienne Giroux. I’m your doctor.”

“Where-”

“At the hospital in Ahtna.”

Kate tried to raise her head. “What happened to me?”

“You were shot,” Giroux said without inflection. Her hand was steady on Kate’s wrist. She had brown hair pulled back in a twist, a softly rounded figure beneath a starchy white coat.

Kate closed her eyes. “I remember now,” she said after a moment. She opened her eyes. “What happened to the woman who shot me?”

“She’s here, too, just down the hall. Under guard, so don’t worry.” Giroux hesitated. “She’s in a lot worse shape than you are. We might wind up having to take off” her arm.“

“Good,” Kate said, and slid downward to darkness again.

When she woke up the third time, she was alone in the room. There was the muted clink of glassware and cutlery in the hall, and a moment later the door swung open. “Miss Shugak?” A round red face peered in. “Oh good, you’re awake.”

She was served lunch-a soggy ham sandwich, a tasteless macaroni salad, and a banana. She forced it all down because she knew the sooner she regained her strength, the sooner she could go home and cook for herself.

None of the meals that followed over the next day and a half were any better. She didn’t have anything to read and there was nothing to watch on the television suspended from the ceiling over the foot of her bed. She was so bored, she could have screamed, and she was a little hurt that she hadn’t had any visitors. Ruthe had had visitors non-stop.

Before dinner the next day, the door opened. Kate looked toward it and all she saw was a gray streak cannoning toward her. “Mutt!” she said, and was ashamed that her voice trembled. “Where did you come from?”

“I thought you could use some company,” said a voice from the door. “I brought you some books, too.” Jim Chopin set a sack on the table next to the bed.

Mutt had leapt to the bed and was nosing Kate all over, an anxious whine coming from her throat. “I’m all right, girl,” Kate said, half laughing, half crying. She winced when a leg bumped into her side, but it was the best pain she’d ever felt and she wouldn’t have traded it for no pain and no Mutt.

“She has to behave,” Jim said. “I had to get a special dispensation from the doctor to get her in here.”

“She’ll behave,” Kate said, knotting her hands in Mutt’s ruff and shaking her. “Won’t you, girl?” She looked up at Jim.

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Ethan told me to tell you that Johnny’s fine. Johnny told me to tell you that Gal’s fine. Giroux said I couldn’t stay long, so I’ll-” He jerked a head at the door and retreated a step.

“You brought Mutt to me?” To her horror, her voice began to quaver.

He shrugged. “Yeah. Well. I better go. I’ve got-”

By a sheer effort of will, she mastered her voice. “Jim.”

He fell silent.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome. I mean, it’s nothing. I just, I-Jesus, Kate, I thought you were dead.”

His face was pale and strained. “Mutt came for me; she practically took the door of the cabin off. She bullied me into my clothes and into Billy’s Explorer and down the road. It was all her.” He paused, thinking of the last time he and Mutt had ridden to Kate’s rescue, not near long enough ago, when Kate had been dumped like so much garbage in a landfill outside Ahtna. He didn’t know how many more times his heart was going to stand up to that.

“I thought you were dead,” he repeated. “There was so much blood-all over you, all over the floor.” He stopped again, then swallowed with difficulty. All over the floor where they had lain together just days before. “At first, I couldn’t find a pulse.” Mostly because he’d been so scared, but he wasn’t going to say that. Not yet anyway. “I wrapped you up as best I could.” He shook his head and gave a brief unhumorous laugh. “I couldn’t find hardly anything to use for bandages-I’d used up pretty much everything they had on Ruthe. In the end, I tore my shirt into strips and used that.”

Mutt lay down next to Kate. She watched him over the big gray head.

He took a deep breath. “Longest drive of my life, longest flight. It was blowing snow and fog by then, I took off and landed both below minimums. I’m probably going to hear about that from the FAA.”

He didn’t sound overly concerned about it. She watched him twist the ball cap with the trooper emblem on the front between his hands. “I thought you were dead,” he said, his voice so low that she could barely hear it. “I thought I’d lost you.”

It was very quiet in the room for a few moments. Kate opened her mouth and found that she had to clear her throat before she could speak. “What about Christie?”